The JPSA system has been installed and is ready to start cutting! Well I should say that the UV excimer system is ready. The femtosecond system is currently causing some headaches. Primarily, the femtosecond system’s set power (3.3 mJ) and high repition rate (1 kHz) are causing some headaches. We are looking in to ultra-fast variable attenuators from Altechna to address the set output power of the Legend system. The trick here is to lower the power with out streching the pulse. This makes conventaional laser power adjustment with ND filters or polarizers unseable. The Altechna system uses thin film polarizers in combination with half waveplates to minimize the pulse stretching while allowing continuous pulse attenuation.

The inital placement of the JPSA µ-machining platform has been completed. With the arrival of the installation eningeers from JPSA and Coherent Scientific we can begin the final alignement of the Xantos Excimer laser (in the foreground on the labjack) and the Coherent Legend femtosecond laser beam paths. Just getting the system in the door proved to a challenge, but with the removal of a few (probably) insignificant handles we managed to JUST slip it in. We didn’t even need to remove the door frame (a speculation brought up serval times in the past. Thanks for the Peter!