September 2000 Meeting

Melles Griot Laser Group Open House

The Optical Society of San Diego is pleased to present an open house at Melles Griot Laser Division's new Carlsbad facility. We thank Melles Griot for this exciting event.

The dust has finally settled since the laser division moved a few miles to this 100,000 square foot site about a year ago. Much has changed since our tour of the old facility. Melles Griot continues to design and build its product line of air cooled lasers, including helium-neon, argon and helium cadmium lasers here. The helium cadmium laser manufacturing of Liconix (acquired prior to the move) has been co-located here. The facility is now also the home of Melles Griot's new diode pumped solid state (DPSS) laser product line. The DPSS laser products were added through the acquisition of the Laser Power Microlaser.

The rate of helium neon tube production has grown 20% since our last visit, to about 120,00 tubes per year. The tubes built here are used to make bar code scanners and copy machines (Melles Griot is the exclusive supplier to Xerox). Melles Griot also makes specialty green, yellow, orange and single frequency HeNe lasers and develops customized lasers for particular applications, such as particle sensing. Of special interest to our members will be the use of glass fabrication facilities, the optical metrology and laser characterization equipment in a production line context. Glass cutting, fusing and turning equipment is used in the manufacture of tubes from extruded stock. Quality assurance is provided by automated beam quality, optical spectrum and lifetime assessment.

Among the diode pumped solid state lasers manufactured here are 5W green, and 400 mW blue and red models. These products have applications in laser surgery, projection displays and semiconductor inspection.

 

Meeting Review:

"Melles Griot Laser Group Open House"
by Jim Menders

We started the year off with an open house at the Laser Group's new home, showcasing their new building with its expanded manufacturing capabilities. Thanks go to our hosts Lisa Tsufura, Nina Richards and a veritable army of technical staff members for the tours and the refreshments-there seemed to be plenty of shrimp, chicken wings and mini-quiches for all 60 of us!

We broke into several small very personally attended groups for the tours. My small group's guide, Jerry Black, walked us through the three laser assembly operations, including the HeNe, diode pumped solid state and air cooled argon ion laser manufacturing. Jerry, an expert in gas laser tube manufacturing, described the fabrication process from its start with glass tube stock, and finish with a filled tube. As we progressed along the laser assembly and testing areas, he handed us over to other Laser Group technical staff members for additional detailed explanations and demonstrations. The tube manufacturing operation produces over 100,000 tubes annually and is, out of necessity, well automated. The production line is full of unique automations-all designed and built in-house. My favorite was a guillotine-like device used for shearing 3 alignment bolt heads off the body of a laser housing in one fell swoop.

We also took mini-tours of the solid state, the helium-cadmium and the Omnichrome argon ion laser manufacturing areas, and saw product exhibits. The diode pumped solid state laser manufacturing is done in a series of clean rooms, which kept us at an arms length from the actual assembly areas. But, we were entertained by an exhibit of an integrated 3 laser red-blue-green source for display projection. The source featured 3 brick sized DPSS lasers whose beams combined to make a collimated white light beam.

Our first meeting of the year was a great way to start the 00-01 program. Throughout the year, our monthly meetings give us an opportunity to reunite with colleagues and friends, and to make new acquaintances. Here's to another fine season of the Optical Society of San Diego!