High-power fiber lasers have become one of the most important tools for material processing in the last decade. Laserline GmbH, which is primarily known for its multi-kilowatt direct-diode lasers, also introduced a fiber-laser platform as a brightness converter for its direct-diode lasers a few years ago. Currently, output powers up to 6 kW at beam qualities down to 4 mm mrad are commercially available. The platform is based on a single directly water-cooled ytterbium doped XLMA (extra-large mode area) fiber in an end-pumped configuration, which can easily be combined in series with a standard diode laser. In this paper, we present the latest progress in power scaling of our fiber-laser system. By improving the material properties of the active fiber, the thermal management and the thermo-mechanical stability of the resonator, up to 10 kW output power from a single, unidirectionally pumped fiber-laser oscillator with a beam parameter product in the range of 4 mm mrad to 8 mm mrad is demonstrated. Further power scaling up to 17.5 kW with 8 mm mrad was achieved by bidirectional pumping of the active fiber. In both cases, a rather high optical conversion efficiency of 75-77 % leads to a wall-plug efficiency of ~35 % for the whole laser system. Currently, we do not observe any physical limits, such as nonlinear effects for example.
In surface processing applications the correlation of laser power to processing speed demands a further enhancement of the performance of short-pulsed laser sources with respect to the investment costs. The frequently applied concept of master oscillator power amplifier relies on a complex structure, parts of which are highly sensitive to back reflected amplified radiation. Aiming for a simpler, robust source using only a single ytterbium doped XLMA fiber in a q-switched resonator appears as promising design approach eliminating the need for subsequent amplification. This concept requires a high power-tolerant resonator which is provided by the multikilowatt laser platform of Laserline including directly water-cooled active fiber thermal management.
Laserline GmbH and Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology joined their forces1 to upgrade standard high power laser sources for short-pulsed operation exceeding 1 kW of average power. Therefor a compact, modular qswitch has been developed.
In this paper the implementation of a polarization independent q-switch into an off-the-shelf multi-kilowatt diodepumped continuous wave fiber source is shown. In this early step of implementation we demonstrated more than 1000 W of average power at pulse lengths below 50 ns FWHM and 7.5 mJ pulse energy. The M2 corresponds to 9.5. Reliability of the system is demonstrated based on measurements including temperature and stability records. We investigated the variation possibilities concerning pulse parameters and shape as well as upcoming challenges in power up-scaling.
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