LSP Technologies Celebrates Production Laser Peening Milestone

Laser peening service provider LSP Technologies Inc. (LSPT) recently surpassed 50,000 turbine blades processed at the company’s production facility in Dublin, Ohio. LSPT was founded as the world’s first commercial laser peening company, and has been providing job shop and production services for nearly fifteen years.

“We take a lot of pride in our production processing,” said Chris Vann, LSPT Production Manager. “Our staff works around the clock laser peening critical parts for our customers. It’s a testament to the experience of our team and the quality of our processes that we consistently deliver to meet our customers’ production quotas.”

LSPT achieved this production milestone thanks to innovations in laser technology and process control that have accelerated industry adoption and production throughput.

• LSPT began laser peening aerospace parts in 2003, processing several hundred aerospace turbine blades that first year.
• As process application techniques improved, laser peening adoption expanded into the power generation industry. By 2010, LSPT was processing several-thousand gas turbine blades annually for original equipment manufacturers.
• By the end of 2017, LSPT expects to increase its production capacity by several times with the incorporation of the 20 Hz, Procudo® 200 Laser Peening System into its production line.

Laser peening is a powerful metal improvement process for increasing the service lifetime of components though enhanced resistance to corrosion, cracking, and fatigue. Laser peening utilizes controlled plasma bursts to produce beneficial compressive residual stresses up to ten times deeper than shot peening.

Some interesting facts highlighting the magnitude of production processing at LSPT:

• LSPT has delivered more than 20 million high-energy laser pulses to steel and titanium turbine blades, covering an area of 4 million square centimeters (roughly the size of a basketball court).
• Lined up vertically, the laser spots would reach a height of twelve and a half miles – the operational ceiling of the F-22 Raptor.
• The combined plasma bursts have generated over two trillion pounds of pressure per square inch – about half the estimated pressure at the center of the sun.
• Given that each laser pulse is delivered for just a few billionths of a second, the cumulative irradiance time over fourteen years of production processing at LSPT is less than half a second.

LSP Technologies is the world’s premier laser peening services, technology and equipment provider. The company performs high-volume production processing at its AS9100 certified facility, and is the only company in the world selling, installing, and integrating production-capable laser peening systems.

For more information about laser peening production services, laser peening equipment, or the physics behind the laser peening process, contact LSPT today.