When the first fiber laser systems were developed, they were relegated to low power milliwatt applications. Early fiber lasers were mainly used in communications, but did not have applications in material processing as they could not be scaled to the powers needed for this industry. Due to an increase in interest in the fiber optic technology and rapid developments of fiber lasers, such as ytterbium fiber lasers, the efficiency of tens of kilowatts are now possible. As the technology continues to develop, the initial cost of the fiber laser system declines, which led to fiber lasers offering the lowest price per watt with the highest beam quality, resulting in a quickly growing market share in material processing applications.
Fiber lasers are lasers that utilize an optical fiber doped with rare-earth elements as an active medium. Erbium, ytterbium and neodymium are some of the most commonly used rare-earth elements in fiber lasers, like ytterbium-doped fiber lasers and erbium-doped fiber lasers. These elements have a useful energy level configuration that allows for a cheaped diode laser pump source to be used to excite medium, e.g. erbium can absorb photons at 980 nm, which then decays to a meta-stable state at 1550 nm.
A diode laser pump source is convenient due to the multiple advantages that it provides: it is cheap, efficient and can be stacked. High-power fiber lasers are advantageous to many industries, especially material processing that includes laser cutting, laser engraving, laser welding, etc. There is no need to couple the laser output to a fiber in order to direct it where it needs to go as the lasing is occuring in the fiber. Therefore, the need for complicated optical setup is removed. The laser output of the fiber lasers is high quality – it is very straight and doesn’t spread out – as it is being created in a relatively confined area of the core. The power of the laser beam is confined to a small spot size, which is important for material processing applications. Moreover, high power fiber lasers are efficient with 70-80% power conversion, which implies fiber lasers are easy to cool as not a lot of energy is lost to heat compared to other high power lasers. High power fiber lasers have a long operating life of around 1 million hours, high peak power and long pulse duration; these characteristics are essential for high-speed marking and cutting applications.
Optromix is a fiber laser manufacturer that develops cutting-edge laser systems and new fiber optic technologies. We produce unique fiber laser scientific systems and specialize in single frequency fiber laser products. We manufacture lasers using our own technologies based on the advanced research work and patents of international R&D team. Laser processes are high quality, high precision, easily-automated manufacturing solutions that provide repeatability and flexibility. Our company is constantly developing new laser systems that can potentially be used for fiber laser powered solar sails.
If you are interested in high-power ytterbium-doped fiber lasers, please contact us at info@optromix.com
