Pulsed Fiber Lasers from ns to ms range and their applications

Abstract

Fiber lasers are widely used in industry for various applications. For marking applications the most common types are pulsed fiber lasers with low average power (10–20 W), pulse lengths of 100 ns and pulse energy in 0,5-1 mJ range.However for applications of high speed ablations and cleaning of surfaces higher average power and pulse energy is needed to realize shorter production cycle times. For this purpose pulsed fiber lasers with morehockey 17 h than 500 W average power and 50 mJ pulse energy have been developed to realize economic processes.In the long pulse range (μs to ms pulse length) QCW fiber lasers have been introduced that fulfil the demands of high pulse energy (up to 60 J) at lower average power (few 100 W range). These lasers fulfil the requirements that so far only lamp pumped Nd:YAG-lasers have been realized: high peak power and pulse energy with low average power in order to reduce investment costs for such devices.This presentation describes the latest development of such pulsed fiber lasers and their industrial applications and focuses in more details on drilling applications.