Interview

Laser technology and industrial marking

INTERVIEW

Carlos Martínez de Marigorta, Laser Product Manager at COUTH Industrial Marking Systems

COUTH is a company specialised in industrial marking and traceability that is present in 66 countries of the five continents. Its offer is mainly focused on high-value proposals that maximise productivity at production plants thanks to the speed, quality and efficiency of their micro-percussion, scribing and laser products. In this interview, Carlos Martínez de Marigorta, the Laser Product Manager at COUTH Industrial Marking Systems, describes the collaboration between Tekniker and COUTH and the challenges this company is facing.

What needs did COUTH Industrial Marking Systems have prior to developing this new marking solution?

Since 1954, COUTH has met industrial traceability requirements in a number of sectors such as, among others, automotive, oil and gas, aerospace, steel or railways.

It has been possible to satisfy these needs because we have developed the technologies used for this purpose to a much greater extent. Before developing a new laser family, COUTH has always been and still is one of the leading international suppliers of dot peen and scribing technologies for the marking of metallic parts to enhance traceability.

In 2016, and coinciding with the incorporation of a new property to the company, COUTH defined a new strategic plan in which a key role was played by significant R&D investments to develop new generations in already existing technologies and new technologies associated with significant growth as key pillars for our strategic plan.

Although dot peen and scribing technologies do come under a worldwide niche, the continuous expansion of laser marking has been identified as a strategic development and growth opportunity for COUTH.

It is within this framework that COUTH established a development plan for a new family of industrial marking machines based on laser technology that brought about the collaboration with Tekniker and allowed us to launch a new generation of laser machines in 2018 aimed at COUTH’s industrial market.

What are the benefits of the laser technology that has been developed with regard to the future of your company?

Although industrial traceability needs are clearly growing on an international scale in those sectors in which COUTH is involved, the growth of laser technology (a relatively new technique in the area of industrial marking) is showing signs of accumulated year-on-year growth that is even higher than the rates achieved by pre-existing technologies with which is coexists in a number of targeted applications.

In other words, and as far as COUTH’s future is concerned, laser technology that is used to meat industrial traceability needs is associated with a significant growth vector for our company.

Why have you placed your trust in Tekniker to receive extensive counselling to develop this solution? How would you rate Tekniker’s contribution?

Tekniker is a national reference in different areas of science and laser is clearly one of them.

When I joined COUTH to launch this new business line, we established a strategic relationship in this field with Tekniker to define the products that had to be developed and eventually launched into the market.

This collaborative action was carried out within the framework of a two-way approach. At COUTH, on the one hand, we analysed the needs of our end users and, on the other, Tekniker made available to COUTH all the knowledge required on the state of the art of this technology and this eventually gave rise to a family of high quality and top-performing products coherent with the COUTH and Tekniker brands.

Bearing in mind the results obtained to date and our expectations with regard to the next few years, our assessment at COUTH is totally positive.

In terms of future collaborative actions, what are your upcoming challenges going to be like?

As a leading company in the field of industrial traceability operating at an international scale, COUTH will continue with its significant investments in R&D to continuously improve its current portfolio and extend its range of actions by incorporating new products to the existing family.

For instance, we could highlight the R&D project developed in collaboration with Tekniker consisting in applying ultrasounds technology in the field of permanent industrial marking.

Although the area of laser technology is very extensive, we are still extending our catalogue by developing new products based on increasing wavelengths and power ratings and incorporating new functionalities in automated and robotised systems to be applied in those industries where COUTH is currently involved as well as in other new sectors in which we intend to extend our offer through artificial vision and traceability systems within the scope of our industry 4.0 philosophy.