Plymouth, MI—Perhaps TRUMPF Inc. should send its new director of sales & marketing, Walter Haimerl, out before every open house, as his invitation to almost every attendee at this year's ALAW produced what appeared to be a record turnout at the company's annual open house here. Crowds of people, including a bus load from the Toronto area, jammed the facility so that for much of the oral presentations it was standing room only.
What seemed to attract the crowds to this two-day event? Maybe it was the showing of the TLW 60S laser scanner powered by a 6kW CO2 laser. This unit, recently qualified by BMW, is focused on the automotive market where the one-meter or more working distance is a plus. At ALAW a session on remote welding drew a large and attentive audience, so those who journeyed to TRUMPF were treated to a demonstration of high-speed spot welding.
Other attendees were taken by the LASMA, a five-axis machine, equipped with a CW solid-state laser, which has its beam directed by fiber to handling units that could either swivel or rotate.
PowerWeld, the unit introduced last year for mold and die repair, was an active exhibit. Manual operation in an open environment, with laser power up to 200 watts from solid-state lasers, has lead to wide usage of this unit.
The TLC 1005 universal machining system for laser cutting, welding, and surface treatment has a modular design that allows a range of travel dimensions and a choice of Nd:YAG or CO2 lasers with average output power to 12 kW, which makes this unit extremely flexible for a variety of processing operations;
A varied tutorial program drew heavy attendance; none more so than the presentation of TRUMPF's new disk laser (see page 15) as presented by Richard Peterson. Many of the attendees had heard a similar presentation at the preceding day's ALAW meeting but still had great curiosity for this unit, which is expected to be the next major laser for body-in-white applications.
TRUMPF appears to be prescient with the choice of new introductions timed to market wants and needs. At Fabtech last year the company introduced moderately priced laser systems just when the market had a need. At the open house it again showed good market timing as judged by the heavy attendance and buying interests of those ILS spoke with.
—DAB