JK Lasers (part of the GSI group) has released its new mode converter fibre coupler (MCFC), developed to provide flexibility to users of the company's fibre laser products. The MCFC takes a Gaussian profile single mode fibre input from any of the company's fibre lasers and couples it into a JK Luminator fibre, allowing for the use of the full range of the company's fibre lasers with its established JK Luminator line of process tools.
The output from the JK Luminator fibre has a uniform flat-top beam profile and a beam diameter of 150-600µm depending on the configuration selected by the user. Focused spot sizes in the range of 60-1500µm can be selected by use of the appropriate Luminator process tools.
The company states that use of the MCFC can bring processing advantages to welding applications, in which the small spot size of the Gaussian beam are not optimal. Featuring a detachable output fibre and the company's Plug-In Pre-Aligned (PIPA) technology for rapid changeovers, the MCFC offers increased versatility to the user at a fraction of the cost of a second laser.