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Science Minister Chooses New Company's Laser to Launch more High-Tech Companies

Bryan Bryden with one of the company's lasers
Bryan Bryden with one of the company's lasers
Originally Published 25 January 2001

Herfurth Lasers are delighted that Science Minister Lord Sainsbury has chosen one of their lasers to launch the new Mercia Institute of Enterprise. The New institute has the goal of creating at least 10 new fast growth technology firms a year from the region's Universities Just last year "Herfurth Lasers" itself "spun out" from the University of Warwick as a full company on the basis of some novel laser technology. This month the company sold its first complete £70,000 laser to Koito Europe in Droitwich.

The company deals with a range of laser techniques but one which has attracted national press interest assists manufacturers trying to stick two pieces of polypropylene type materials together. Such companies are usually faced with using environmentally unfriendly pre-treatments. Some of these pre-treatments are chemical, others heat based, but all waste time and cost money. These can now be dispensed with thanks to Herfurth's technology developed by the Warwick Manufacturing Group at the University of Warwick.

The researchers have devised a very different approach that goes against conventional thinking on the use of lasers to solve plastic bonding problems. They use a high power laser and a close study of the behaviour of the laser beam combined with a fine understanding of the joining properties of many plastics to produce an unconventional, but extremely effective technique, that allows a range of plastics to behave as if they were transparent and let the laser light through to the interface between the two components.

For further details please contact:


Dr Bryan Bryden,
Warwick Manufacturing Group
University of Warwick,
Coventry CV4 7AL
Tel: 024 76 572623
email: B.G.Bryden@warwick.ac.uk