Developments in lasers continue to enable progress in many areas such as eye surgery, the recording industry and dozens of others. This book presents citations from the book literature for the last 25 years and groups them for ease of access which is also provided by subject, author and titles indexes.

New chapters on bending and cleaning reflect the changes in the field since the last edition, completing the range of practical knowledge about the processes possible with lasers already familiar to users of this well-known text. Professor Steen's lively presentation is supported by a number of original cartoons by Patrick Wright and Noel Ford, which will bring a smile to your face and ease the learning process. From the reviews: "...well organized, and the text is very practical...The engineering community will find this book informative and useful." (OPTICS AND PHOTONICS NEWS, July/August 2005)

This volume presents the editors' research as well as related recent findings on the applications of modern technologies in electrical and electronic engineering to the automation of some of the common manufacturing processes that have traditionally been handled within the mechanical and material engineering disciplines.In particular, the book includes the latest research results achieved through applied research and development projects over the past few years at the Gintic Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Singapore. It discusses advanced automation technologies such as in-process sensors, laser vision systems, and laser strobe vision, as well as advanced techniques such as sensory signal processing, adaptive process control, fuzzy logic, neural networks, expert systems, laser processing control, etc. The methodologies and techniques are applied to some important material processing applications, including grinding, polishing, machining, and welding. Practical automation solutions, which are complicated by part distortions, tool wear, process dynamics, and variants, are explained.The research efforts featured in the book are driven by industrial needs. They combine theoretical research with practical automation considerations. The techniques developed have been either implemented in the factory or prototyped in the laboratory.

Synthesis of nonequilibrium metallic phases has been an area of great interest to the materials processing community since early 1960. Inherent rapid cooling rates in laser processing are being used to engineer non-equilibrium microstructures which cannot be rivaled by other processes. This lecture will discuss the phenomena involved and its application in designing materials with tailored properties. What is non-equilibrium Synthesis? This is a synthesis method to produce binary or higher order materials where kinetics of the pro cess affects the transport of the constituent elements during phase transformation resulting in a composition or crystallographic configuration which is different from what is observed when the elements arranges themselves with the lowest possible Gibbs Free energy, which is the equilibrium condition. Figure 1 illustrates the phenomena. Phase diagram under equilibrium condition is illustrated by the solid line whereas the no-equilibrium phase diagram is represented by the dotted line. One can observe the shrinkage of the phase field under non-equilibrium condition. Any alloy composition between the solidus lines of the equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase diagram will be a non equilibrium alloys with extended solid solution.