Contact UsNewsCareersSearchLanguage PRODUCTS APPLICATIONS INDUSTRIES COMPANY INVESTORS WHY IPG? Why IPG → IPG Technology Vertical Integration Customer Benefits Energy and Tax Savings History 2015 Highlights IPG Technology Fiber laser technology has made a revolutionary impact on laser manufacturing The Fiber Laser Revolution The amazing success of fiber laser technology and its revolutionary impact on laser-based manufacturing bear the hallmarks of more widely publicized technology game changers, such as the displacement of vacuum tubes by the transistor. The analogy is apt when we consider that legacy lasers are bulky, inefficient and short lived devices which are difficult to assemble and require frequent service. Fiber lasers, on the other hand, are compact, highly efficient and robust devices which offer service-free operation through the entire application lifetime. The simplicity and elegance of the fiber laser account for its efficiency, compactness, robustness and low cost which drive its enormous success in the marketplace. The True Industrial Laser The fabulous success over the first 50 years of industrial lasers owes itself to the laser’s ability to convert common sources of energy into highly directed beams. To accomplish this task, every laser is comprised of its energy source, a method of coupling that energy into the laser cavity, and a method of delivering the resultant laser beam to the workpiece. The technical advantages of fiber are apparent in each stage of the architecture. Energy Source: Legacy lasers utilize numerous energy sources ranging from lamps, RF plasmas and even chemical reactions. Common drawbacks of these energy sources include poor energy conversion efficiency, frequent service requirements and environmentally unfriendly consumables. Fiber lasers utilize long-lived semiconductor diode lasers to efficiently convert electricity into light, and thus require no service or consumables. Energy Coupling: Conventional laser optical cavities convert input energy within bulky air or gas-filled spaces. Large cavities are necessary due to the inefficiency of gas lasing or the need to insert bulk optical elements within the cavity. Fiber lasers are incredibly compact because they convert semiconductor diode energy into useful laser beams within a fiber no thicker than a human hair. Laser Beam Delivery: Legacy lasers utilize complex optics to extract the laser beam and deliver it to the workpiece. For example, a sealed window may be needed to isolate exotic or noxious chemicals inside the laser. External steering optics are often needed to deflect the laser output onto its target. In contrast, flexible optical fiber provides an elegant built-in, ideal beam delivery system. The True Industrial Laser: Both key fiber laser elements, semiconductor diodes and optical fiber, lend themselves to mass production with outstanding process control and repeatability, while the key fiber laser assembly step is fusion splicing of optical fibers. Compare this with the bulky hermetic laser cavities, precision optical alignments and ultra-flat optical surface requirements typical of legacy lasers, and it’s apparent that the simplicity and elegance of the fiber laser accounts for its efficiency, compactness, robustness and low cost which drive its enormous success in the marketplace. The highest output powers and superior beam quality at the lowest cost IPG's Unique Technology Platform IPG's unique technology platform allows our products to have higher output powers and superior beam quality at a lower cost than can be achieved by any other competing technology. Our proprietary designs are based around innovative pumping techniques and high-performance components perfected by IPG over a 20-year period of intense investment and innovation. The cornerstones of IPG technology are our cladding side-pumping technique and distributed single-emitter diode pumping architecture. The Building Blocks Optical Fiber The basic building block of IPG fiber laser technology is optical fiber. Optical fiber is a long cylindrical piece of highly transparent glass. Typical fiber core diameters range from a few microns to hundreds of microns, while lengths range from meters to many kilometers. The huge aspect ratio of the fiber length versus diameter is responsible for many of the unique properties of fiber lasers. The glass fiber is an optical waveguide able to contain and propagate light with negligible loss. When the total internal reflection condition is satisfied, light propagates inside the fiber with negligible radiative losses through the wall of the fiber. Optical fibers are classified as passive or active. Passive fibers transport light, while active fibers introduce amplification by mixing the propagating light with pump laser light in the presence of rare earth metal ions embedded in the fiber core. Pumping Diodes IPG’s best-in-class diode pump technology leverages the vast telecommunication industry experience and technology investment. Our single emitter diodes are manufactured using telecom-proven technology and processes, and each wafer is qualified to rigorous telecommunication industry standards, which sets IPG apart from alternative industrial pump products using short-lived diode bars and bar-stack technologies. As a result, IPG single emitter diodes offer an order of magnitude higher pumping brightness and up to double the power efficiency of bar-stack pumps. Single emitter pumps are able to use simple water or even forced air cooling, as opposed to bars-stacks which require expensive, unreliable and complex microchannel coolers using high pressure deionized water. Fiber has unique qualities that make it the superior choice as the active gain medium for laser resonators Fiber’s unique properties make it an ideal active gain medium and laser resonator material. Fiber is flexible and easy to handle. Optical fiber’s huge surface to volume aspect ratio facilitates heat removal and helps to avoid thermal lensing. Fibers of different types, compositions and core diameters can be spliced to construct complex optical systems combining the pump sources, optical amplification and beam delivery fiber without the need for free space optics and their inherent risks of contamination, damage and or misalignment. Fiber is a hugely flexible medium which enables a vast variety of design options and functions. Examples of specialty optical fiber types are single-mode and multi-mode fibers, photonic crystal fibers, and fibers composed of diverse materials whose optical properties vary in both the axial and radial dimensions. Of particular importance to IPG are fibers used for cladding pumping. These fibers consist of a single-mode core, used as active gain medium, surrounded by a larger diameter optical waveguide for propagating multi-mode diode pump light. Fiber laser is the most efficient power combiner and brightness converter Semiconductor diodes efficiently convert electrical pump energy to near-infrared light. A single diode has limited power (a few Watts per device) and limited brightness. Several techniques combine multiple diodes into a single beam to enhance power, reaching combined outputs ranging from a few tens to a few thousands of watts, but attaining similar diode brightness improvement is elusive. Available beam combining techniques for scaling diodes to higher brightness are complex, expensive and lossy, and provide questionable beam quality. The IPG fiber laser is the most efficient power combiner and brightness converter technology, and it is capable of producing perfect beams offering kilowatts of power at the lowest cost. Side cladding-pumped technology revolutionized high power fiber lasers Cladding Pumped Technology In IPG’s unique and proprietary design, the multi-mode output of broad-area single emitter diodes is collected into fibers with core diameters as small as 100 microns. Using the side-pumping technique developed by Dr. Valentin Gapontsev and Dr. Igor Samartsev, the light from many pump diodes is efficiently coupled into the cladding of an active gain fiber. The pump light undergoes multiple reflections within the cladding while frequently intersecting the single-mode core, where the pump is absorbed and re-emitted by rare-earth ions. This elegant mechanism brightness converts multi-mode diode light into single-mode fiber laser light with exceptional efficiency. Side pump technique for transferring energy from a large area laser diode into a small (single mode) fiber core to allow light to be amplified Our pumps have proven expected lifetime of greater than 100,000 hours. Single Emitter Pump Advantages IPG’s single emitter diode lifetimes exceed 100,000 hours, about an order of magnitude longer than the measured lifetimes of bar-stack alternatives. Unlike traditional alternatives, frequent on/off modulation of IPG diodes does not affect anticipated lifetime. IPG pumps are hermetically sealed to telecom standards, so are unaffected by the most aggressive industrial environments including humidity, dust and vibration. The exceptionally high reliability of IPG’s single emitter pumps is proven in our laboratories and substantiated by our excellent field reliability. Bar / Bar Stack IPG Single Emitter Pump Individual Emitter Output Power, W 1-2 6-10+ Coupling Efficiency, % 75 / 50 90-95 CW MTBF, hrs 5,000 - 10,000 > 200,000 QCW MTBF, hrs 2,000- 5,000 > 200,000 Wall-plug Efficiency. % (in fiber) 25-35 50-60 Advantages of Distributed Single Emitter Pumping Architecture Distributed Single-Emitter Pumping Bar Pumping IPG uses a distributed single-emitter pump architecture that is free of the drawbacks of bar pumping. Single emitter pumps form an ensemble of independent individual elements. Contrary to bars, the failure of any number of single emitter pumps does not affect the performance and reliability of the remaining pump ensemble. Distributed pumping’s advantages include scalability, their modular design and flexibility, simple thermal management, virtually unlimited pump redundancy and ease of diode replacement. Distributed pumping is alignment-free and is thus only truly service-free pump solution – a convenience only found in fiber lasers. Laser diode bars, also known as monolithic laser diode arrays, combine multiple emitters along a large area chip. Emitter count on a single bar varies from 10 to 100. The bar architecture forces all emitters to share a common electrical current source and thermal management system. Thermal and electrical cross-talks seriously limit bar lifetimes and place severe constraints on their performance. The lifetime of a bar or a bar-stack is generally limited by its weakest emitter or an unreliable microchannel water cooling system. The inferiority of bar-based pumping schemes for lasers is a significant driver behind the rapid adoption of fiber laser technology over disk or rod-based solid-state lasers. Literature © 2016, IPG Photonics Corporation All rights reserved.