Table of Contents
Applications of Fiber Lasers in Industry and Medicine
Fiber lasers are used for material processing applications such as cutting and welding in the automotive, manufacturing, heavy industry, and consumer electronics sectors. They are also being used for medical applications. Apart from the mentioned, a fiber laser source is used for marking and engraving components for better traceability and for removing product falsification and inventory management.
Ensuring Laser Quality and System Integration
Nowadays, companies have become more careful about the quality of the laser delivered to the process. The quality of the laser is usually measured on the laser source. Most laser sources will be integrated into a system being used for a specific process, set of processes, or applications. That system can consist of optics and mechanical components used to shape, resize, and deliver the laser energy in many different ways, depending on how the laser is applied. In sum, the laser light from that source can interact with several different components, each affecting its quality.
Market Trends and Technological Innovations
Researchers of market forecast that the global fiber laser market to increase at a CAGR of 15.81% during the period 2016-2020. A new trend in the fiber laser market is the development of a ribbon-core fiber laser light source. Researchers have developed ribbon-core fiber lasers to increase the fiber laser output radically while keeping the beam quality. Ribbon-core fiber lasers are produced by a line of doped silica rods surrounded by undoped rods to increase the beam quality. The refractive index of the central ribbon core is high, which helps focus the light. These fiber lasers’ source can produce high levels of power without being thermally damaged.
Advantages and Market Drivers
A key market driver is the increased use of fiber lasers in materials processing. The flexibility of using a wide range of materials and the advantages of using lasers over other conventional processes have made them the first choice for many materials processing applications, such as metal welding, plastic welding, and brazing, mostly in automotive engineering, cladding or repair welding, and cutting of metals for the machine tooling, automobile, and medical sectors. Fiber laser sources are solid-state and offer high reliability and convenience. Materials processing involves chemical or mechanical steps for product manufacturing across industries such as automotive, general manufacturing, heavy industry, aerospace, and electronics.