SPI Lasers, a designer and manufacturer of fibre lasers has launched a CW low-moded laser designed for thin material spot welding. The laser will be launched at Laser World of Photonics China, Shanghai, on 19 March.
Single-moded lasers with high-intensity Gaussian beams produce exceptional penetration, but this is not always desirable. When welding thin materials or where it is preferred that the weld is not visible from the back, then the low-moded 200W laser has proven to be a suitable solution.
The energy is evenly spread over a wider area, this removes the high intensity peak inherent in single mode beams.
For this laser SPI has tailored the beam (M2 ~ 4/ BPP ≤ 1.4mm.rad) to suit the application with the right degree of intensity and mode stability, delivering the perfect profile to avoid cratering or break throughs in the spot weld.
With CW or modulated (up to 100kHz) modulation capability creating sub 10us pulses, and class leading power output variation of <1% the laser provides a solution in micro-welding across a range of applications include smart phones, battery contacts, medical devices and fine connectors.
Stuart McCuloch, medium power product manager for SPI Lasers, said: 'Beam tailoring has become a standard feature of SPI’s pulsed lasers for marking and micro-machining and now in 2013 SPI have moved onto the CW medium power product set. The capability to provide such specific moded lasers is enabled only by laser companies capable of designing and drawing their own fibre, of which SPI is one of the few world-wide.'