Five future trends of fiber laser equipment

Laser is the core component of laser equipment, and the downstream application field of laser equipment is very extensive, involving important industrial fields such as electronic information, equipment manufacturing, communications, transportation equipment, medical equipment, aerospace, oil pipelines, and additive manufacturing. The Chinese government has always attached great importance to the development of the laser industry, because laser technology is one of the key supporting technologies for the transformation and upgrading of my country's manufacturing industry.

my country's laser industry industrial chain has initially formed a complete and mature industrial chain. The upstream mainly includes laser materials and auxiliary components, the midstream is laser manufacturing, and the downstream is laser equipment, application products, and consumer products. At present, the domestic laser market mainly includes laser cutting equipment, laser etching equipment, laser engraving equipment, optical communication equipment and equipment, laser measurement equipment, laser laser, laser medical equipment, laser components, etc. Its products are mainly used in industrial processing and optical communication markets, accounting for about 70% of the market share.

Panorama of the laser industry chain

Currently, my country's laser industry has formed four major industries: Beijing, Jiangsu, Hubei, Shanghai, Guangdong and other economically developed provinces and cities, among which the four major industrial clusters are Central China, Bohai Rim, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta. In addition, since laser is closely related to the seven major areas of strategic emerging industries, it is also an important part of the strategic emerging industries of high-tech equipment manufacturing industry and a policy-supported industry. What is the future development prospect?

Future trends?

With its advantages of high efficiency and low maintenance costs, laser has gradually been favored by laser system integrators. It has or is replacing traditional processing methods, bringing revolutionary changes in the manufacturing industry and promoting industrial upgrading. With the continuous expansion of the application scope of laser in the field of industrial processing, the laser industry will show the following development trends in the next few years:

1. The development trend of pulsed fiber laser is high average power and high peak power.

In many laser applications, such as laser deep engraving and laser cleaning, pulsed fiber lasers with high average power and high peak power are required. With high-quality, low-power lasers as seed light sources and double-layer optical fibers as amplifiers, it is easy to obtain pulsed laser outputs with high average power and high pulse energy, which is a hot spot and difficulty in the industry.

2. Continuous fiber lasers are developing towards ultra-high power.

Continuous lasers can be used for the processing of non-metallic materials, and have broad application space in the processing of high-tech materials such as semiconductors and composite materials. Driven by the needs and wide applications in high-tech fields such as ships and the universe, higher output has become one of the main research contents of the development of continuous fiber lasers, and its output has developed from hundreds of watts and kilowatts to tens of thousands of watts. It is hoped that by adopting higher-power pumping sources, more advanced fiber-specific designs, and high-power fiber beam combining technology, fiber lasers can reach outputs of tens of thousands of watts. Industrial equipment equipped with tens of thousands of watts of high-power continuous fiber lasers will become the mainstream of high-end manufacturing equipment.

3. Solid-state lasers are developing in the direction of high power and ultra-high speed.

Therefore, in the field of laser precision processing, such as drilling holes in brittle materials and cutting sapphire glass, high-power and ultra-high-speed lasers are required. Solid-state ultrafast lasers are the current research hotspot.

4. Turn to higher brightness.

High-beam lasers have broad application prospects in scientific research and military fields, and their main users are scientific research institutions, colleges and universities, and government departments. At present, developed countries abroad use high-energy lasers with high beam quality as the preferred light source for tactical laser weapons. The special requirements of special material processing, scientific research, military and other special requirements will prompt lasers to develop in the direction of higher brightness, that is, while increasing the output power, maintaining the output beam quality of the laser.

5. Towards modularization and intelligence.

With the development of laser technology, laser equipment will gradually move towards serialization, combination, standardization and generalization. With limited specifications and varieties, through the combination and matching of various modules, the development cycle of new products is shortened and the stability and reliability of products are improved. Using advanced communication technology and design concepts, remote diagnosis, remote maintenance, remote control and data statistics of laser equipment are realized. By real-time monitoring of the operating status of laser equipment, potential faults can be discovered and handled in advance to provide customers with better product services.