Business briefs

19 Mar 2010

Featuring news from Coherent, Texas Instruments, BIOLASE, Boeing and Jenoptik

• Boeing has completed the preliminary design of the US Navy's Free Electron Laser (FEL) weapon system, a key step toward building an FEL prototype for realistic tests at sea. The laser will operate by passing a beam of high-energy electrons through a series of powerful magnetic fields, generating an intense emission of laser light that can disable or destroy targets. "The FEL will use a ship's electrical power to create, in effect, unlimited ammunition," said Gary Fitzmire, vice-president and program director of Boeing Directed Energy Systems.
• BIOLASE Technology, a specialist supplier of dental lasers, has received 510(k) clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration to market its iLase diode laser. The company describes the iLase as the first completely self-contained, handheld dental laser. "We look forward to offering this to our customers in the US and around the world and are on schedule to begin shipping in April," said BIOLASE chief executive officer David M Mulder.
• Coherent says that its Genesis CX355-250 laser sets a new high-power benchmark for true continuous-wave (CW), ultraviolet, solid-state performance by delivering over 250 mW of TEM₀₀ output. The company says that all of its Genesis CX355 lasers utilize optically pumped semiconductor laser technology and are the only class of commercial solid-state laser to provide true-CW UV, rather than pulsed or quasi-CW (modelocked) output. According to Coherent, one major application that will benefit is flow cytometry of live cells.
• Jenoptik's Industrial Metrology division is to equip three General Motors plants in Thailand, India and Uzbekistan with state-of-the-art measurement equipment for the manufacture of crankshafts. The order was worth around €5 million and includes the purchase of optical inspection equipment.
• Texas Instruments (TI) announced this week that all of the DLP Cinema subcomponents for its DLP Cinema 2K and its upcoming 4K platforms have recently completed testing for Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) standards by passing the procedural test administered by CineCert. DLP Cinema is the first ever projector technology to achieve this status. According to TI, this will enable DLP Cinema's OEM licensees – Barco, Christie Digital and NEC – to complete final testing of their new DLP Cinema next-generation electronics platform models and ship in the coming months.