Kern Laser Systems was recently named as the recipient of the Minnesota Governor’s International Trade Award for Manufactured Goods. Read about this prestigious award in our latest press release.
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Kern Laser Systems was announced as a 2024 Minnesota Manufacturing Awards honoree by the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal. The Business Journal will feature all 2024 honorees in the July 19 Minnesota Manufacturing Awards special section.
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Many of our customers, and those in the industrial laser industry, know Kern as a reputable US manufacturer of laser cutting and engraving systems. Kern has been manufacturing laser systems since the early 90’s and has thousands of systems in the field working on a wide spectrum of applications. Up until 2012 Kern partnered with various vendors to supply the “heart” of our laser system, the CO2 laser source. Like other technical products, lasers need to be serviced and maintained to keep them running smoothly. This is widely accepted and incorporated into our training and service manuals. However, lasers can also fail for reasons other than neglected system maintenance. With any product it becomes frustrating when the same components fail year after year. It was apparent that design flaws were not being proactively corrected, and in many cases, the same known problems were being pushed into production time after time. This was one of the driving forces that catapulted KERN into designing our own CO2 lasers.
In 2012, Kern Technologies, was formed as an off-shoot of our R&D department. A new building was constructed across the road from our main factory to better meet the demands of CO2 laser production. Clean-rooms, ultra-sonic cleaners, cryogenic vacuum stations, laser beam profiling equipment and alignment tables are just some of the investments we made in our effort to make the best lasers possible. Internally, we discussed three core principles that would drive our company to success.
As mentioned previously, every laser needs to be serviced at some point in its life. When a laser fails the customer’s machine is “dead in-the-water”. Every day the laser is not repaired, the customer is losing production and ultimately dollars are lost down the drain. The single most important question customers should be asking laser manufacturers is “What is the laser replacement or repair policy?”. I have heard too many stories over the past few years of customers waiting 6-8 weeks or longer to receive a replacement laser. It has almost become the norm with several laser machine vendors.
Due to this fact, Kern has put together the most effective advance replacement program in the industry. Instead of repairing the laser onsite or requiring the defective laser to be returned for repair, Kern simply sends a replacement laser to the customer upfront. This allows the customer to have their laser system back up and running as quickly as possible. Once the laser is swapped out the customer simply places the defective laser in its box and it is returned to Kern.
Kern’s 100-200 watt lasers are small enough to ship by UPS Next Day service. This means our customers can be up and running with a replacement laser in as little as 1-2 days. This is the level of service our customers have come to expect, and that Kern strives to achieve!
Once the customer is back up and running, Kern’s work has just started. Our laser technicians then receive the defective product and do a complete failure analysis of the laser source. The reason for this analysis is to understand the cause of the failure which is then documented in our quality control system.
Periodically, failure reviews are performed to determine if product or process improvements can be implemented. The goal being to eliminate problems and ultimately decrease the failure rate of each laser model. The process works and Kern’s failure rates are dropping year after year. In essence, the more lasers we manufacture, the more reliable they will become.
After the failure analysis is completed Kern’s technicians determine if the laser is to be disposed of (older laser revs or badly damaged lasers) or refurbished. Refurbishing the laser generally means replacing parts, re-gassing, software updates and putting the laser back through the testing and calibration process that all new and advanced replacement lasers must pass. Once completed these lasers are ready for the next customer that needs a quick Advance Replacement laser. Refurbished lasers are never placed on NEW machinery.
The frosting on the cake is Kern’s industry leading 3 year Advance Replacement warranty that is placed on all new laser tubes. This is generally 1-2 years longer than most laser manufacturers are placing on their products. Additional years of warranty can be purchased at the time of sale or any time an advance replacement laser is shipped out.
After reading this blog I hope you have a better understanding of “why” Kern started laser manufacturing and the benefits our customers will realize because of this. If you have any questions about our CO2 laser sources please do not hesitate to contact us.
The story of laser manufacturing in 2023 and beyond looks to be one of continued growth in spite of lingering economic headwinds from pandemic recovery, supply chain challenges, and the general economic volatility of recent years.
The fiber laser industry is predicted to grow by approximately 880 million dollars between 2022 and 2027, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.05%, according to a market report summary by PRNewswire, available from Yahoo. This report notes increasing demand for high-powered fiber lasers due to the many purposes they serve. (We offer a fiber laser in the form of our FiberCELL, an integrated 1–3kW laser system built into a high-quality safety enclosure.) A related report analyzing the tunable laser market predicts market growth of approximately 530 million dollars in the tunable laser sector during 2021–2026.
Manufacturers continue to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as 2022 draws to a close, and this recovery should continue in 2023. The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and global policy responses to it, have also had rippling effects throughout many areas of the world economy, from prices of fuel to the availability of certain parts.
Although the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 caused demand for lasers to dip in North America, the previously cited fiber laser market report notes demand was increasing again by the second half of the year, and the North American market is now predicted to account for about 30% of fiber laser market growth by 2027.
According to a recent guest editorial in FFJournal, shortages and supply chain challenges can be expected to continue into 2023 and even 2024, although in the U.S., some steps have been taken that could help to soften the impact of these problems, such as the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to incentivize manufacture of computer chips and microprocessors in the United States.
Another article in FFJournal notes one response from some manufacturing businesses to supply chain difficulties has been the practice of near-shoring or re-shoring their offshore production work—bringing production back home, or at least closer to home, and mitigating or eliminating layers of logistical complexity. At Kern Laser Systems, we’re also fighting shortage issues. Thankfully, we’ve been able to continue delivering machines within a 6-12 week lead time.
A current piece of sponsored content on The Fabricator’s website advertising an upcoming webcast about on-site nitrogen generation for laser cutting operations illustrates this desire to simplify manufacturing logistics in the laser cutting industry. Generating nitrogen on-site would be an alternative to taking deliveries of nitrogen for these businesses.
As in any year, in 2023 laser cutting operations will continue to upgrade and adjust their shop equipment and work processes in competition with one another, adopting the latest products offered by laser manufacturers. This competition between businesses that use lasers spurs competition between the businesses that make them.
A recent article in The Fabricator provides details of how Indiana metal fabricator Southwest Welding has continually upgraded the laser technology in their shop over time., with modern fiber lasers allowing the shop to cut aluminum faster and with less dross, and increased automation allowing them to operate machines overnight. In the article, employee Lyle Martin notes, “Laser cutting has really exploded the capabilities of what we can do, especially compared to waterjet cutting or stamping.”
Although laser cutting, engraving, and manufacturing technologies have been around for several decades at this point, lasers and laser systems are technologies that remain in constant development, and the advances made by producers of laser technology directly impact the efficiency of the companies and individuals that use these products for their businesses.
Multiple recent briefs in The Fabricator highlight product introductions of high-quality entry-level laser cutting systems and cost-efficient fiber laser cutting systems in the fourth quarter of 2022. We just introduced our own KT300 and KT500 CO2 model lasers, which improve upon and replace our existing KT250 and KT400 models after we made a number of modifications that enabled a higher output power from the lasers.
In an ideal world, product innovation drives up the level of performance a user can get out of a lower-priced product, and it also simultaneously drives down the price of admission for professional quality equipment; however, in our real world, of course, there are more complex forces at play, and laser equipment customers may continue to feel the impact of 2022’s high inflation in laser prices.
In addition, even as inflation starts to ease, prices of equipment could remain high. If more laser manufacturing companies and even manufacturers in adjacent businesses do bring production home to the United States, this could result in more high-quality laser products hitting the market, which is good for the consumer, but manufacturing in the U.S. also tends to result in higher prices in addition to higher quality. That’s why we commit ourselves not only to building the highest quality lasers we can, but also to selling them for the best prices we can—and that commitment remains evergreen at Kern, no matter what year it is.