Photo: Vadim Sadovski on Unsplash
Lasers can be fun for kids and parties, useful for science and health, and deadly as weapons. What Boeing is patenting here might be something else entirely. A newly disclosed United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) filing shows it. Here’s how this new technology will work and what use cases it might have.
While Boeing’s founder started his industrial career with boats, planes would later become his main concern. Now the company is looking into entirely different things. Building lasers might sound fun, but it is actually a challenging feat to achieve. Expensive materials, high precision calculations and blends, rigorous testing, a lot of energy and the right optical elements are needed. These are not cheap and that easy to find nowadays. But Boeing doesn’t give up that easy.
The company’s idea for a powerful laser also includes one that is easily tunable. With the help of free electrons that go through the lasing process and turn into photons, Boeing’s planning on using extremely powerful magnets that provide a certain structure. This will be able to accommodate different alignments that will result in lasers with different wavelengths. This new technology will also use tubes, coils, insulators, and slots that’ll be able to extend or shrink. Essentially, the beam can be adjusted to be less or more powerful. While it might sound simple, this represents extraordinary progress.
Although the patent doesn’t specify exactly how this new technology will be used, there are some mentions regarding manufacturing, cutting, welding, and surgical operations. But this doesn’t mean it will stop its use cases here as the energy beam can be set between one kilowatt and hundreds of megawatts of continuous or pulsed power. Further details and specifics can be found in the USPTO filing attached below.
Boeing’s new powerful laser patent reveals important progress. Let’s wait and see how it will be used.
The company’s idea for a powerful laser also includes one that is easily tunable. With the help of free electrons that go through the lasing process and turn into photons, Boeing’s planning on using extremely powerful magnets that provide a certain structure. This will be able to accommodate different alignments that will result in lasers with different wavelengths. This new technology will also use tubes, coils, insulators, and slots that’ll be able to extend or shrink. Essentially, the beam can be adjusted to be less or more powerful. While it might sound simple, this represents extraordinary progress.
Although the patent doesn’t specify exactly how this new technology will be used, there are some mentions regarding manufacturing, cutting, welding, and surgical operations. But this doesn’t mean it will stop its use cases here as the energy beam can be set between one kilowatt and hundreds of megawatts of continuous or pulsed power. Further details and specifics can be found in the USPTO filing attached below.
Boeing’s new powerful laser patent reveals important progress. Let’s wait and see how it will be used.
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