Industry Trends

Fiber lasers are gradually gaining favor among laser system integrators due to their advantages such as high efficiency and low maintenance and operation costs. Revolutionary changes have driven the continuous development of the global laser market. With the continuous expansion of the application scope of fiber lasers in industrial processing, five major development trends will emerge in the fiber laser industry in the coming years:

1.Driven by additive manufacturing technology and its wide application, higher output power has become one of the main research contents in the development of fiber lasers in high-tech fields such as shipping and aerospace. The output power of fiber lasers will develop from several hundred watts and kilowatts to 10,000 watts. It is expected that by adopting higher-power pump sources, more advanced special fiber designs and high-power fiber beam combining technologies, the output power of fiber lasers will reach tens of thousands of watts. Industrial equipment equipped with high-power fiber lasers ranging from kilowatts to tens of thousands of watts will become the mainstream equipment for high-end manufacturing.

2. Develop pulsed fiber lasers with high average power and peak power. In many applications of lasers, such as laser deep engraving and laser cleaning, lasers with low beam quality and low power are used as seed light sources, and double-clad fibers are used as amplifiers. The easy acquisition of pulsed laser output with high average power and high pulse energy is currently a hot and difficult point in industry research.

3. Development towards ultra-short pulse fiber lasers: In the field of laser precision processing, such as drilling brittle materials and cutting sapphire glass, ultra-fast and ultra-short pulse fiber lasers are required. At present, medium and high power ultrafast and ultrashort pulse fiber lasers are a hot topic in research and development.

4. The development towards higher brightness: High-power fiber lasers with high beam quality are in great demand in scientific research and military fields, with the main users being research institutions, universities and government departments. At present, developed countries abroad all regard high-beam quality high-power fiber lasers as the preferred light source for tactical laser weapons. Special demands such as military ones will drive fiber lasers to develop towards higher brightness while increasing output power. Meanwhile, maintain the output beam quality of the fiber laser.

5. Development towards modularization and intelligence To meet the diverse demands of the market for lasers, fiber lasers will gradually develop in the directions of serialization, combination, standardization and generalization. By making use of limited specifications and varieties, and by combining and matching different modules, the new product development cycle can be shortened, and the stability and reliability of the products can be improved. Meanwhile, by adopting advanced communication technologies and design concepts, remote diagnosis, remote maintenance, remote control and data statistics of fiber lasers can be achieved. By monitoring the operating status of fiber lasers in real time, potential faults of the products can be detected in advance and dealt with, thereby providing better products and services to customers.