Osram Opto introduces turbo charged industrial lasers
Osram Opto says its new laser bars can simplify the design of laser systems and reduce their cost.
Laserline are now using laser bars from Osram Opto Semiconductors as the core of its latest and most powerful fibre-coupled diode laser series for industrial material processing. The complete system is water-cooled and supplies between 2 and 15 kW power via a fibre with a core diameter of 1 to 2 mm.
The overall efficiency reaches maximum levels of more than 40 percent.
Laser bar series SPL BKxx-40WFT
The laser bar series SPL BKxx- 40WFT produces infrared radiation in various wavelengths, ranging from 915 to 1020 nm. As a result of their efficiency values of up to 65 percent, the bars achieve a long operating lifetime of up to 30,000 hours and meet the requirements for industrial laser systems. The dimension bar width is 10 mm with a cavity length of 4 mm.
Besides the optical pumping of fibre lasers, direct material processing, for example welding and cutting of metals in the automotive industry, is one of the main applications of infrared lasers with more than 1 kW power.
Direct diode lasers are one of the most efficient laser light sources for such fibre-coupled systems and are a suitable alternative for the previously often used though less efficient carbon dioxide lasers.
Michael Klein, Marketing Manager for laser bars with Osram Opto Semiconductors, emphasises, “Our developments in the field of laser bars push the utilisation of direct diode lasers into ever higher power ranges, thus enabling our customers to open up new markets. The end-users benefit from the improved technology, e.g. lower investment cost because less laser bars are required to generate the needed power. Furthermore, the cost for electricity and maintenance will also decrease due to high efficiency and long operating lifetime.”
This laser has been developed on the basis of results, which Osram Opto Semiconductors discovered in the project HEMILAS, supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.
The main results were the efficiency optimised structure of epitaxy layers and improved mirror technologies with a high damage threshold.
