Perfect precision thanks to lasers

摘要

Tolerance is desirable as a quality between different people and groups, but the goal in this case is to keep it to a minimum. Why? Because "precision engineering," as experts call it, is the goal and the name of a technology that uses lasers to keep tolerances as low as possible. The expert's name is Alfred Kahl, head of shipbuilding in Hamburg at Blohm + Voss, a subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp Technologies. He is a straightforward engineer who doesn't get flowery when the subject turns to laser technology, yet is unable to resist listing its advantages down to the last detail. Of course, he realizes that for many people, laser technology means one Hollywood sensation or another: wasn't it used in that James Bond film? Didn't Bond use laser beams to destroy airplanes, and weren't lasers even being deployed in an attempt to rule the world?