The UV laser is a ProtoLaser U3, made by LPKF. It was designed for rapid-fabrication of PCBs and micromachining work. It uses a 6W 355nm laser made in-house by LPKF. The work area is 9”x12” with a vertical range of 0.4". It has a built-in vision system for alignment and is maintained by David Peterson.
The system is useful for making circuit boards, cutting metal foils or Kapton sheets, and machining ceramics. Because the UV laser ablates material with multiple passes, rather than melting or burning through in a single pass, there is not a stringent limit on the thickness of the material to be cut. However, due to the optical setup, cutting becomes less efficient as the cut becomes deeper. Standard FR4-backed circuit boards are best made with 1/32" substrate or thinner. In addition to the cutting mode, the laser may be defocused for heating, which is used, for example, to rapidly remove copper from a substrate after first slicing it into strips.
The LPKF system is subject to STF oversight for ten years after the award—until the summer of 2024. During this time, the system should be accessible as outlined in the proposal (http://techfee.washington.edu/proposals/2014-072/).