Roll-to-roll manufacturing is well established in many segments like electronics, micro manufacturing or solar technology. Continuous roll-to-roll manufacturing processes can be integrated with various manufacturing steps within the production line. While many conventional and laser manufacturing techniques could already be embedded successfully into roll-to-roll machines, pulsed laser structuring could not be adapted sufficiently. The main obstacles are insufficient pulse repetition rate levels with required pulse energy and beam deflection speed and accuracy. The PoLaRoll project aim is to bring together current developments and fully integrate a high speed ultra-short pulse laser ablation process into a roll-to-roll machine fulfilling the requirements of individualised laser-based mass production. Various disciplines are in focus of the PoLaRoll project: A femtosecond laser will be developed with high pulse energy at extremely high pulse rates. Innovative polygon scanner technology for ultra-fast beam deflection is advanced in speed and accuracy and a dual polygon scanner will be developed enabling simultaneous laser structuring of top and bottom face of web material. An in-line metrology method will be developed enabling process monitoring and control. Highly sophisticated methods will be developed and applied enabling the synchronisation of the ground-breaking ultra-fast processing sub-systems. To prove the PoLaRoll process performance a target application has been selected, which is solar shading of glass facades. The laser formed micro structure's geometry allows cutting the solar radiation and therefore reduces the energy used for cooling and ventilation. The PoLaRoll laser structuring module will be integrated into a prototypical modular designed roll-to-roll machine as well as in a conventional machine for mass production operated by the industrial end-user. Thus the PoLaRoll project will be able to revolutionise the current state of the art in digital roll-to-roll processing.

A world record power 2.5kW laser providing from picosecond down to femtoseconds pulses at repetition rates up to 1GHz with excellent beam quality will be developed and brought to the market at highly competitive costs enabling widespread industrial uptake. By harnessing the unique characteristics of patent protected tapered double-clad fiber amplifiers power-scaled multichannel laser, unparalleled high-power beam qualities, M2<1.1, and pulse energies 2.5-250µJ will be achieved. Using the state-of-the-art highly stable laser diodes as seed lasers allowing parameter flexibility by ultrafast electrical control of pulse duration and repetition rate will a broad range of high-power laser processing application requirements to be met. An extremely stable advanced all-fiber based configuration allow development of a compact ultrashort pulse laser system. A newly-designed delivery fiber utilising cutting-edge technology of high purity glass material fabrication will be used to capable of handling the very high power ultra-short pulses, preserving beam quality over several meters distance. Pioneering technology based on 3D nano-imprint lithography will be exploited to produce coherent beam combining optics and fiber-facet-integrated micro-lenses for advanced beam shaping elements to elongate voxels. Together these will provide laser pulse delivery via patented polygon scanner technology capable of handling high-power pulses at speeds of up to 1.5 km/s. These will enable demonstration in automotive and renewable energy sectors of ultrafast 3D ablation, low-thermal welding of dissimilar metals and faster cost-effective cutting of ultra-hard materials. Exploitation in the form of high-power laser processing systems will immediately follow, benefitting from the unmatched performance data and detailed cost benefit and investment case analysis performed.

ComMUnion enables productive and cost effective manufacturing of 3D metal/ Carbon Fibre Reinforced Thermoplastic (CFRT) multi-material components. ComMUnion will develop a novel solution combining tape placement of CFRTs with controlled laser-assisted heating in a multi-stage robot solution. High-speed laser texturing and cleaning will overcome the limitations of current joining technology to provide greatest performance joints. ComMUnion will rely on a robot-based approach enabling on-line inspection for layer-to-layer self-adjustment of the process. Moreover, tools for multi-scale modelling, parametric offline programming, quality diagnosis and decision support will be developed under a cognitive approach to ensure interoperability and usability. ComMUnion will address the following key innovations: - Texturing and cleaning based on high speed laser scanning for surface condition. - High-speed spatially resolved control of surface temperature profile. - Multi-scale metal/CFRP modelling, self-adaptive process control, and quality diagnosis based on multimodal active imaging. ComMUnion approach will decrease by 30% the consumption of titanium and boron steel, (costly alloys requiring critical materials). Besides, reinforcement of textured metallic surfaces with CFRT tapes will increase mechanical performance of multi-material components over 30% without cost increase. Manufacturing of two pilot-cases for automotive and aeronautics will demonstrate the scalability of the joining process. It will be possible trough a consortium with a strong involvement of industrial partners (73% of which 55% are SMEs). The outline of the business plan ensures the exploitation of the project results. With a target market of 2.000 companies and a fair estimate of 2% market penetration (5 years after the commercialization start), ComMUnion will result in 40M€/year incomes.