Laser for material processing possesses a number of advantages which mean that it has been and will be an important component for a wide range of industries' future development. Cutting materials processing is the dominant use of laser technology and has revolutionized the manufacturing industry. The aim of this thesis is to describe the principles of metal cutting by laser, how Laser Cutting is applied in practice and to identify how Swedish companies are using Laser Cutting. For the theoretical and technical description of Laser Cutting literature studies are the primary source of information. The empirical basis for the mapping of the Swedish industry for Laser Cutting is grounded on a survey; this includes Swedish companies that use Laser Cutting in their production.

Lars Höglund AB is one of Scandinavia?s most qualified manufacturers of sheet metal products and provides custom designed products of very detailed precision. One of the main methods of manufacturing is Laser Cutting. When Lars Höglund AB signed up a new customer, with high demands in tolerances for the products, Lars Höglund AB thought it would be necessary to know the capability of the Laser Cutting machine. Also the process of how to retrieve this capability was interesting. The capability will be researched for the following elements: Cutting right angles in squares with a corner radius of 1 mmCutting corners which are not right angleCutting of circles with constant radius Measurements were made on 150 pieces of sheet metal details, which had been cut out by the machine.  The data from the measurements where later used to study the capability.

An investigation of the heat impact of Laser Cutting on the material properties when producing tensile and impact test specimens of different steel types of varying thickness has been performed. The purpose of the thesis project was to provide recommendations regarding how much material that needs to be milled from the laser cut edge before tensile and impact tests. The study has been performed partly by investigating the test specimens by heat camera when the specimens were cut in the Laser Cutting line and partly by performing hardness tests, investigation by microscopy, and tolerance and roughness measurements and tensile tests of the laser cut material and material produced in the traditional multi operation machine. The results show that the heat affected zone in the thicker materials is greater than previously thought of, and that the currently used recommendation has to be adjusted. The study clearly shows that the thicker the material, the greater the heat affected zone, independently of the steel type, since the thicker material takes longer time to cut.

An investigation of the heat impact of Laser Cutting on the material properties when producing tensile and impact test specimens of different steel types of varying thickness has been performed. The purpose of the thesis project was to provide recommendations regarding how much material that needs to be milled from the laser cut edge before tensile and impact tests. The study has been performed partly by investigating the test specimens by heat camera when the specimens were cut in the Laser Cutting line and partly by performing hardness tests, investigation by microscopy, and tolerance and roughness measurements and tensile tests of the laser cut material and material produced in the traditional multi operation machine. The results show that the heat affected zone in the thicker materials is greater than previously thought of, and that the currently used recommendation has to be adjusted. The study clearly shows that the thicker the material, the greater the heat affected zone, independently of the steel type, since the thicker material takes longer time to cut.

The purpose of this report is to explore how modern technology can work againstolder craft techniques. The focus of the research will depend on what conditions areoptimal for cutting marquetry with laser technology. In my work I account for thehistorical background of the various techniques and then through own practical testsexamine whether the laser technology can complement the traditional techniques..

Today Holmen Skog finds and selects suitable thinning stands using data on upper height and basal area. These figures are often based on basic forest data that has been updated with the help of growth prediction models. The problem is that these figures are not always correct. The aim of this study was to investigate if a combination of data from a profiling laser and a digital camera for low elevation photography, can be used for collecting data on number of stems per ha, tree species mixture as well as basal area weighted mean height and upper height for stands. The possibility to use these data to assess the need for thinning cutting was also investigated.Laser data and aerial photographs were collected from a helicopter operating at an approximate height of 100 meters.

The purpose of this study was to investigate produced laser data from the new national height model's airborne laser scanning in Sweden, what quality it has and whether it can be used for forest management planning. From airborne laser scanning one can obtain information on forest variables such as tree species, height, diameter and basal area. Norra skogsägarna is the principal employer of this project and they wanted know to the quality of the laser data which needs to cope with their standards. If the laser data the quality required it can replace some of the operations performed by field planners. To examine the quality of the produced laser data a control tax assessment has been performed in 30 forest departments. This was done in an objective manner.

To make it easier for forestry planning the forest owners needs data which describe characteristics of the forest. Such data you usually get from some type of inventory. A relatively new technology which probably is getting more important in the future, is laser scanning because of lower costs. But because the laser technology is relatively new you need to compare it with conventional inventory technologies to get better understanding of the possibilities the laser technology gives. This work intends to estimate field measured characteristics of the forest from laser data with help of regression analysis and then see which of the field measured properties that best could be estimated and which laser variables that gave the best results. This study shows that heights has the best estimates, but biomass, diameter and volume also gives good estimates.

Neoplasm 2.5D, is a project centered around exploring possibilities of combining various digital tools with the use of a lasercutter, to create intricate patterns withillusions of depth and texture, and to combine these studies into a working fullscale model that could be the basis for a future design product..

This degree project has been carried out in cooperation with Enertech AB in Ljungby and is pilot study to automating all current manual soldering. The soldering process accounts for a large part of the processing cost in the production of a heat pump. The process is also a quality risk and has a major impact on the lifetime of the final product.The Main task of this project has been to evaluate automation of the soldering process, to develop automation solutions and a principle layout, to draw the design changes required for the automation and to calculate the supposed solution.This pilot study has resulted in a suggested automation solution using laser as a heat source for soldering. Calculations of the solution show that a automating a laser soldering cell is very profitable..

This report describes a thesis project on 15hp. The purpose of the thesis project is to build a laser projector that reacts on sound waves and thus get a laser beam to draw visualizations of sound waves on a wall. The idea was that the design would be independent and not have to be plugged into any audio equipment. This was achieved by absorbing sound waves into a microphone. Another factor was to get a ?do it yourself? -feeling of the design and therefore it was chosen to be constructed using for example, old hard-drives.The result was a relatively large and bulky designed laser projector that can draw sound waves on a wall..

A change towards using more biofuels than fossil fuels is taking place in Sweden, and in many other parts of the world. This makes the use of fuel pellets increasingly popular, causing a greater demand for sawmill sawdust products. There is a trend towards the use of multiple types of shredders, instead of a single type in each sawmill. The purpose of the study was to characterize the different flows of saw particles that can be found at Sävar såg when cutting thick or thin wood with different cutting techniques. The saw particles size, shape, moisture content and heat value were analysed by the cutting stations: first cutting fast and slow, second cutting fast and slow, grading fast and slow and planning.

This study was conducted to test the hypotheses that a forest managed by selective cutting can store more carbon than a forest managed by clearcutting. The study was carried out as a meta-analysis. The data that was found was analyzed by performing t-tests on the proportional effect that the two silvicultural methods had on the driving factors of CO2-efflux and carbon stores in coniferous boreal forest. In all areas tested, an effect in favor of selective cutting was found, but not all of them significant however. The soil respiration following selective cutting was significantly lower than that of clearcutting, and the primary production of a clearcut area cannot according to reason exceed that of an area post-selective cutting.

Uppsala University is involved in a large international collaborationto build the Laser heater system for the European Xray Free-electronlaser in Hamburg, Germany. In this thesis I describe a laser incouplingdevice into the vacuum chamber of this laser heater all the way fromthe specifications to a completed design.The laser heater is a very important part of the XFEL and thepart described here is a part of the vacuum system needed to couplean external laser into the electron vacuum system and align it withthe electron bunches in order to heat them. The task was started by studying the literature about the basic theory andthe design of vacuum systems. After this study and collection of ideaswith colleagues I started to prepare different concepts to solve thetask. The ideas can be put into two categories, in one case the couplingmirror is located inside the vacuum chamber and in the second caseoutside.

Booth for operational planning of harvesting and for long term planning, data is today collected manually. Intensive objective field inventories are usually too expensive. To enhance optimisation of timber flow from forest to industry Moore efficient methods for measuring tree stems of standing trees are needed. The performance of terrestrial laser scanners have improved and these could possibly be used within forestry in the future. The objective of this study was to validate how a terrestrial laser scanner could be used to measure stem diameter, and to test how the errors depend on distance from the scanner and tree species. Two plots (one pine and one spruce) were used for this study.