Infrared Power

Tailored Heating - General Industrial Processes

Philips Photonics infrared power heating systems are ideally suited for many industrial heat treatment applications, where a directed, homogeneous and controlled infrared illumination is beneficial, for example:

• General thermal processing
• Plastics welding / forming
• Composite manufacturing
• Drying / curing of coatings

• Printed electronics
• Photovoltaics
• Selective metal treatment
• … & many more

Example: Selective metal treatment

To facilitate cold forming of high-strength steel parts, local heat treatment of the parts at specific positions can be applied, as shown e.g. by Fraunhofer ILT . Fiber coupled laser systems with complex beam forming optics or scanners are used to heat a defined area of some tens of square centimeters on the work piece to temperatures of above 800°C.

In contrast to this, VCSEL infrared area heating systems can directly illuminate a larger rectangular area without complicated beam forming optics. This opens the opportunity to establish an in-line easy-to-control process. First tests with a small scale VCSEL source have been performed with promising results. After local heat treatment of a steel sample of 1.5mm thickness at 900°C, the crystal structure was changed as expected, forming a softened zone to facilitate easier forming (see results on the right).