Miniaturization trend of fiber lasers

In recent years, 10000 watt lasers have become standard products in the field of fiber laser cutting machines and the popularity of 10000 watt lasers has significantly improved the efficiency and capability boundaries of industrial processing. However, with a large number of manufacturers pouring into the 10000-watt circuit, homogeneous competition has also plunged this market into a "price war" red sea. This environment has also caused the growth of China's optical fiber laser market to fall into a quasi stagnant situation of "seemingly rising but not rising".

In order to break this market dilemma, many enterprises have begun to seek differentiated competitive routes. Currently, the three obvious routes for fiber lasers are high power, high brightness, and miniaturization.

High power has been the main theme of the development of fiber optic lasers in the past few years. With the popularization of 10000 watt lasers, 30000 watt, 40000 watt, and 50000 watt lasers have successively entered the metal processing market. For lasers themselves, the core difficulties lie in the power tolerance and long-term stability of devices; For practical applications, the lack of stable and reliable supporting components is the biggest obstacle to its development.

High brightness is actually the basic attribute of regression lasers. By improving the energy density per unit area, it can achieve the effect of replacing high power with high brightness and low power. At the same time, it has obvious advantages in fields such as high reflective material processing and advanced manufacturing. Its core difficulties lie in the control of mode instability and nonlinear effects.

Miniaturization is a key to opening a new world of laser applications - smaller size, lighter weight, and higher integration. It has overturned the past understanding of laser processing, and has spawned portable laser tools such as handheld laser welding, handheld laser cleaning, and greatly promoted the development of laser applications.

The miniaturization process of ten thousand watt lasers

Due to the fact that fiber lasers can achieve power improvement through module superposition and beam combination, the overall volume of the laser is also increasing during the process of fiber laser power improvement. In 2017, a 6kW fiber laser with multiple 2kW modules combined entered the industrial market. In the following one or two years, 8kW, 12kW, 15kW, and 20kW lasers were introduced successively, but even 20kW lasers were combined on the basis of 2kW or 3kW at that time, resulting in a huge volume of finished products. Although the performance has been improved, the excessive volume also poses significant difficulties for users in transportation and assembly. With the increasing demand for 10000 watts, laser manufacturers are beginning to consider how to reduce the overall volume.

The main idea at the initial stage was to increase the power of a single laser module, gradually increasing the previous 3 kW to 4 kW and 5 kW, and reducing the volume by reducing the number of beam combining modules for 10000 watt lasers. However, at this stage, the sudden decrease in the number of modules and the sudden increase in the power of a single module pose a significant challenge to the stability of the laser cores.

As the above challenges are gradually overcome, another major advantage of single module lasers begins to emerge - the beam quality of single module lasers that do not undergo beam combining is greatly improved, and their performance is significantly improved compared to multimode lasers in areas such as sheet metal processing and precision manufacturing. As a result, high-power single module lasers began to become independent products integrated with fiber laser cutting machine. 

At this stage, domestic laser manufacturers have made a lot of optimization and improvement for the application scenarios and optical characteristics of single module lasers. After several years of effort, a single module 12kW laser was introduced. Compared to a multimode 12kW laser, a single module 12kW laser has a volume reduction of about 60%, a weight reduction of about 40%, and a processing capacity comparable to 15kW on certain materials. It can be said that the core idea at this stage is to replace multimode combiner lasers with single module lasers with smaller volumes in some application scenarios.

Guided by the pursuit of smaller volume, some laser manufacturers have begun to conceive new design concepts, achieving a further reduction in the volume of single module lasers. Take BWT, which has a relatively complete miniaturized product line, as an example.Chittak 's laser cutting machine is the same laser generator used by BWT.

In the 1500W and 2000W power bands, which were already very small in size, the Lightning series again reduced its volume by 40% and weight by 25%, while the 3000W power band reduced its volume by nearly 75% and weight by 50%. In the 6000W power band, which has the most significant changes, the lightning laser has reduced its volume by nearly 90% and reduced its weight by nearly 75% compared to the old laser! The "Big Brother" of the Lightning series, the Lightning 12KW fiber laser, is 75% smaller in volume and 60% lighter in weight than the old single module laser.

Expanding the Territory of Miniaturized Lasers

It can be said that this disruptive volume reduction has a significant impact on the downstream, the most obvious of which is the handheld laser welding market. The early hand-held Laser Welding Machine was equipped with a water chiller and an old-fashioned 1000W single module laser, with a cabinet volume of 1.05m? (Equivalent to the volume of an old-fashioned washing machine). With the market explosion and user demand for portability in recent years, smaller and more portable become the consistent pursuit of handheld welding manufacturers. The subversive "bone shrinking" lightning series lasers make it possible to install two hand-held welding machines in a trunk.

For sheet metal processing users, this new form of drawer design allows lasers to be shipped with complete sets of equipment, truly achieving instant use after disassembly, and allows users to say "Bye bye" to traditional and occupied laser air-conditioning rooms, saving more than 30% of equipment installation time.

Another focus that has attracted attention is the significant increase in shipping costs in 2022, which has driven up the transportation costs of export enterprises. The significant reduction in laser volume means a significant increase in the number of lasers that can be loaded in the same container, as well as a reduction in the number of containers required for the same number of lasers, which can save significant freight costs for enterprises. In particular, overseas agents can also gain greater competitive advantages due to lower logistics costs.

According to current market data, miniaturized lasers have initially been accepted by the market. In the first year of the launch of the Lightning series laser, BWT achieved sales of nearly 20000 sets of lasers, and led BWT to achieve an impressive record of 300% year-on-year growth in fiber laser shipments. It can be said that in the current miniaturized laser circuit, BWT has become a well-deserved representative of the leading enterprise.

Prospect -- Development Prospect of Miniaturized Lasers

The lightning laser, which achieved great success in its first year on the market, has proven the feasibility of the miniaturization route for fiber lasers in the industrial field. It is foreseeable that smaller and more portable lasers will be introduced in the near future, and more application scenarios that cannot be accessed by lasers at present are also expected to become a new explosion point in the laser industry after further development of miniaturization.

You may wish to imagine what impact the application scenarios and product design concepts of the entire laser industry will have when the notebook computer sized ten thousand watt laser is introduced? Are laser cutting machine and handheld laser welding machine still in their current form? What will happen to the automatic production line of laser processing because it no longer requires a separate laser position? What kind of "kill weapon" will emerge from the combination of such a subminiature laser and a drone? Where is the limit boundary for miniaturization?