Features

Laser Marking: A Clean, Economical Packaging Solution

Laser marking has emerged as a viable solution for diverse packaging applications over the last several decades. The vast majority of the uses are nonaesthetic, such as marking lot numbers on electrical and automotive parts that enable the manufacturer to monitor their progress through the assembly line and to track their ultimate performance. Some marking applications, however, are targeting the consumer. The undercap markings on linerless closures and high-contrast characters on computer...

Photonics Spectra, November 2001

Photonics Pointers

Interferometry is a routine quality- monitoring test for optical components and systems at wavelengths ranging from the visible to above 10 µm. The technique has been available in commercial tools since the early 1970s, and a number of manufacturers...

Photonics Spectra, November 2001

Technology Close-Up

Galvanometer-based optical scanners are finding a place as positioning solutions for an increasingly broad range of laser applications. While a number of scanning approaches are available, galvanometer-based scanners -- commonly called "galvos" --...

Photonics Spectra, November 2001

A Basement Full of Lasers

It's a short walk from the third floor of the Welch Building on the University of Texas campus to the basement of the Engineering Science Building. That's enough, however, for mid-August in Austin to work its magic. Temperatures above 100 make the...

Photonics Spectra, October 2001

Future Computing

Seventeen years ago, Alan Huang wrote in the Proceedings of the IEEE about the prospects of optical computing. The barriers were, he said, not so much technological, "but more and more [challenges] of imagination." Today many of the promises he...

Photonics Spectra, October 2001

Giving a Green Light

Green lasers have been important since the very first days of the laser. Indeed, many of the earliest applications in medicine, graphics and basic research demonstrated the versatility of green laser light, particularly from the argon-ion...

Photonics Spectra, October 2001

Intensified Fluorescence

Fluorescence is a central technology in medical testing, drug discovery, biotechnology and imaging. In almost all uses of fluorescence, the fluorophores are in the free-space condition, in which they radiate energy with minimal interactions with...

Photonics Spectra, October 2001

Photonics Design and Solutions

Consistency and repeatability are difficult tasks in diode laser manufacturing, but they are critical for high-volume manufacturing of devices that users can trust to work as promised. Process repeatability, still the nemesis of most semiconductor...

Photonics Spectra, October 2001

Sensitive Detection

Capillary electrophoresis is a modern analytical separation technique that has steadily gained importance in recent years, especially in bioanalytical, clinical and pharmaceutical applications. Electroseparation in fused-silica capillaries is...

Photonics Spectra, October 2001

Technology Close-Up

How much valuable time have machine vision developers spent sifting through vast arrays of expensive and often incompatible connectors and cables from camera manufacturers and frame grabber suppliers? Too much -- which is why many developers...

Photonics Spectra, October 2001

Faster vs. Denser: Networks Reach Another Crossroad

Pretty much any engineer with bills to pay will design and develop systems from a simple principle: Maximize performance while minimizing costs. Different disciplines measure succe...

Photonics Spectra, September 2001

In Search of High-Power Optics

Advances in high-power and high-energy laser systems have made available power densities in excess of 109 W/cm2. At such power levels, a number of damage mechanisms can lead to per...

Photonics Spectra, September 2001

In Search of the Ultimate Diode Laser

High-power diode lasers are a focal point for laser technology. In recent years, they have developed from an attractive but costly solution for niche markets into a key laser produ...

Photonics Spectra, September 2001

In Search of the Ultimate Image Sensor

The mainstream in image sensors for high-end studio photography has been 6-megapixel CCDs, and the market is now adopting 16.8-megapixel image sensors as the new reference standard...

Photonics Spectra, September 2001

Photonics Design & Solutions

A number of applied optical measurement tasks require measuring linear displacement or elevation of a radiant source. Many typical photodiode arrays designed for this purpose u...

Photonics Spectra, September 2001

Photonics Pointers

Although a lot of unused fiber sits in the ground, many links in fiber optic networks operate at or near capacity. The importance of each line has increased with the amount of traf...

Photonics Spectra, September 2001

Technology Close-Up

For designers of fiber optic systems, the goal has always been to provide more capacity at lower cost per bit. For more than 20 years, the capacity of systems has doubled every 18 ...

Photonics Spectra, September 2001

Electronics Inspection: A Portrait in Speed

Last year, the electronics industry accounted for 21.4 percent of machine vision units sold in North America. The segment is second only to the semiconductor market, which represented 34.7 percent, according to the Automated Imaging Association....

Photonics Spectra, August 2001

Photonics Design and Solutions

With today’s variety of interferometer applications, it is difficult for standard interferometry software to support the needs of many businesses. The ideal analysis or result is frequently unavailable or requires a multistep manual process to...

Photonics Spectra, August 2001

Photonics Pointers

Airline maintenance workers often use hard dry ice particles in a spray to remove paint from surfaces under conditions where it might be difficult to clean up sand or other spray materials that remain behind. After the dry ice particles hit the...

Photonics Spectra, August 2001

Putting Photonics on the Line

The scene inside XeTel Corp. of Austin, Texas, is one that Henry Ford could relate to -- though it’s a far cry from yesterday’s automobile plants. The manufacturing floor within the 120,000-square-foot facility is brightly lit. It is...

Photonics Spectra, August 2001

Staff Report: Hubble Space Telescope

As darkness falls, a solitary man trudges up the hillside to a lonely domed building. His breath sends clouds of mist into the chilly air as he enters the building and flicks a switch, splitting the dome open to reveal the night sky. He walks up to...

Photonics Spectra, August 2001

Technology Close-Up

The rapid growth in the demand for bandwidth has fueled an increasing global market for high-speed fiber optic components and networking systems. Recent trends toward tighter channel spacing and higher data rates also has led to a greater demand for...

Photonics Spectra, August 2001

Vying for Vias

As communications devices -- cell phones, pagers and personal digital assistants -- become smaller and more intelligent, their enabling high-density printed circuit boards can have as many as 10,000 holes. The limitations of making these holes is...

Photonics Spectra, August 2001

A Little off the Top

Camera manufacturers are bundling ever more functionality into smaller packages. A look at recent camera introductions shows that this year’s hot new full-function cameras are the same size as remote camera heads from a couple of years ago....

Photonics Spectra, July 2001

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