fiber laser systems | DK Photonics Blog

Fiber Laser Welding: Some Traits and Applications(2)

Technological parameter of laser welding:

(1) Power density

Power density is one of the key parameters in laser processing. When the power density is relatively high, the surface would be heated to boiling point in microseconds, thus generate mass vaporization. As a result, high power density is good for material removal processing such as punching, cutting and carving. When the power density is relatively low, it would take some microseconds to meet the boiling point, the bottom can reach the melting point before vaporization occurs, thus a good melt welding is successfully formed. So the power density ranges from 104~106W/cm2 in conductive laser welding.

(2) Laser pulse shape

Laser pulse shape is an important question in laser welding, especially for foil welding. When high strength laser beam reaches the material surface, 60~98% of the laser energy will be lost by reflection and the reflectivity is changeable by the temperature of the material surface. The reflectivity of metal can vary greatly in a laser pulse period.

(3) Laser pulse width

Laser pulse width is an important parameter to distinguish material removal and material melting; it is also a key parameter to decide the cost and volume of processing equipment.

(4) Influence of defocusing amount on weld quality

There are two ways of defocus: positive defocus and negative defocus. It is positive defocus when focal plane is above the workpieces, vise versa. According to geometry optical theory, when positive and negative defocusing plane equals to welding plane, the power densities are almost the same in the corresponding panels, but the actual laser pools have different forms. It can achieve larger depth of fusion when it is negative defocus.

Application field of laser welding

Laser welding machine has wide application in manufacturing industry, powder metallurgy field, automobile industry, electronics and some other fields.

Source : demarlaser

Application of laser welding in automobile industry

Volkswagen AG has adopted laser welding in car roof of brands like AudiA6, GolfA4 and Passat. BMW and GM have used laser welding in top of the car frame while Mercedes-Benz has applied laser welding in drive disk assembly. Except for laser welding, other laser technologies have be applied as well. Companies like Volkswagen GM, Benz and Nissan have used laser to cut covering parts while FIAT and Toyota have adopted laser for coating engine exhaust valve; Volkswagen has used laser for surface hardening on engine camshaft. Domestic vehicle models like Passat, Polo, Touran, Audi, Dongfeng Peugeot and Focus have adopted laser welding technology.

Independent automobile brands like Brilliance, Chery and Geely have adopted laser welding as well.

Improvement and development of new laser welding technology

Laser welding technology is continuously developing along with the progress of the time. The following three technologies can help expanding laser’s application scop and enhancing the automatic control level of laser welding.

filler wire laser welding

Laser welding generally doesn’t fill wires but has high requirement on assembling clearance, which is hard to be guaranteed thus limits the application scope. Filler wire laser welding method has lower requirement on assembling clearance. For example, if the aluminum alloy plate is of 2 mm’s thickness, the clearance must be zero for a good shaping. When adopting φ1.6mm welding wire as filler metal, it can form good shape even the clearance is 1.0 mm. Besides, filler wire can be used for adjusting chemical components and multi-layer welding on thick board.

Beam rotation laser welding

By the adoption of laser beam rotation laser welding methods, demands on welding assembly and beam centering are reduced greatly.

On-line detection and control of laser welding quality

It is becoming a hot researching topic on detecting laser welding process by using plasma such as light, sound and electric charge; some researches have achieved closed-loop control.

DK Photonics – www.dkphotonics.com specializes in designing and manufacturing of high quality optical passive components mainly for fiber laser applications such as 1064nm high power isolator, Cladding Power Stripper, Multimode High Power Isolator, pump combiner,1064nm Band-pass Filter,(6+1)X1 Pump and Signal Combiner, PM Circulator, PM Isolator, optical Coupler. More information, please contact us.

Fiber Laser Welding: Some Traits and Applications(1)

What is fiber laser? The world’s first laser beam is produced in 1960 by the use of flashbulb stimulating ruby crystalline grain. Limited by the thermal capacity of the grain, the pulsed beams is short and the frequency is very low. Although the instantaneous pulse peak can reach up to 106W, it still belongs to low energy output.

Source:tamu.edu

Laser technology adopts the beams of light generated by the reflection of laser from polariscope and congregates the beams in focusing device to generate beams with enormous energy. Once the focus is approaching, the workpieces will be melt or vapored in some milliseconds. This opens up a new welding application domain for high power CO2 and high power YAG laser. The key of laser welding equipment is high power laser, including solid laser and gas laser. Solid laser is the so called Nd:YAG laser. Nd is a rare earth elements and YAG represents Yttrium Aluminum Garnet, with similar crystal structure as ruby. The wavelength of Nd:YAG laser is 1.06μm. It can produce beam transmitted by fiber, so it can simplify beam delivery system, which is suitable in flexible manufacturing systems and remote working as well as high welding precision workpieces. Nd:YAG laser of 3-4 KW output is commonly used in automobile industry. Gas laser is the so-called CO2 laser. Its working medium is molecule gases which can generate iraser of 10.6μm in average. It can work continuously and output very high power; the standard laser power is between 2-5 KW.

The major traits of laser welding are as following:

The welding is fast and deep with little deformation.
It can work in room temperature and disparity conditions with simple equipment and device. For example, the laser beam will not offset; laser welding can be really carried out in vacuum, air or any gas environment, or even through glass or any transparent material.
It can weld refractory materials as titanium and quartz and anisotropic materials with good effects.
When welding, depth-to-width ratio can reach to 5:1 and the highest can reach up to 10:1.
It can applied in microwelding. Slight flare can be generated by focused laser beams which can positioning precisely and be applied in mass automatic production of micro and small workpieces’ installation and welding.
It is flexible in welding areas that is difficult to access. Especially in recent years, the adoption of optical fiber transmission in YAG laser processing technology has greatly promoted the popularization and application of laser welding technology.
Beam split is easy to be realized by time and space and multiple beam can be processed all at once, providing conditions for more precise welding.

However, there are some limits of laser welding:

It requires high assembly accuracy for weld and it should has no obvious deviation of beam on workpieces. It is because that the flare is too small and the welding line is too narrow. If the assembly accuracy and beam position cannot meet the requirements, it is easy to make weld defect.
The cost and initial investment on laser and the relevant systems are high.

Resource : avio

Ultrafast laser pulses induce atoms in gold nanodisks to vibrate

In a study that could open doors for new applications of photonics from molecular sensing to wireless communications, Rice University scientists have discovered a new method to tune the light-induced vibrations of nanoparticles through slight alterations to the surface to which the particles are attached.

In a study published online this week in Nature Communications, researchers at Rice’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) used ultrafast laser pulses to induce the atoms in gold nanodisks to vibrate. These vibrational patterns, known as acoustic phonons, have a characteristic frequency that relates directly to the size of the nanoparticle. The researchers found they could fine-tune the acoustic response of the particle by varying the thickness of the material to which the nanodisks were attached.

“Our results point toward a straightforward method for tuning the acoustic phonon frequency of a nanostructure in the gigahertz range by controlling the thickness of its adhesion layer,” said lead researcher Stephan Link, associate professor of chemistry and in electrical and computer engineering.

Rice University researchers (clockwise from front) Man-Nung Su, Wei-Shun Chang and Fangfang Wen discovered a new method to tune the light-induced vibrations of nanoparticles through slight alterations to the surface to which they are attached.

Light has no mass, but each photon that strikes an object imparts a miniscule amount of mechanical motion, thanks to a phenomenon known as radiation pressure. A branch of physics known as optomechanics has developed over the past decade to study and exploit radiation pressure for applications like gravity wave detection and low-temperature generation.

Link and colleagues at LANP specialize in another branch of science called plasmonics that is devoted to the study of light-activated nanostructures. Plasmons are waves of electrons that flow like a fluid across a metallic surface.

When a light pulse of a specific wavelength strikes a metal particle like the puck-shaped gold nanodisks in the LANP experiments, the light energy is converted into plasmons. These plasmons slosh across the surface of the particle with a characteristic frequency, in much the same way that each phonon has a characteristic vibrational frequency.

The study’s first author, Wei-Shun Chang, a postdoctoral researcher in Link’s lab, and graduate students Fangfang Wen and Man-Nung Su conducted a series of experiments that revealed a direct connection between the resonant frequencies of the plasmons and phonons in nanodisks that had been exposed to laser pulses.

“Heating nanostructures with a short light pulse launches acoustic phonons that depend sensitively on the structure’s dimensions,” Link said. “Thanks to advanced lithographic techniques, experimentalists can engineer plasmonic nanostructures with great precision. Based on our results, it appears that plasmonic nanostructures may present an interesting alternative to conventional optomechanical oscillators and high power isolator”

Chang said plasmonics experts often rely on substrates when using electron-beam lithography to pattern plasmonic structures. For example, gold nanodisks like those used in the experiments will not stick to glass slides. But if a thin substrate of titanium or chromium is added to the glass, the disks will adhere and stay where they are placed.

“The substrate layer affects the mechanical properties of the nanostructure, but many questions remain as to how it does this,” Chang said. “Our experiments explored how the thickness of the substrate impacted properties like adhesion and phononic frequency.”

Link said the research was a collaborative effort involving research groups at Rice and the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia.

“Wei-Shun and Man-Nung from my lab did the ultrafast spectroscopy,” Link said. “Fangfang, who is in Naomi Halas’ group here at Rice, made the nanodisks. John Sader at the University of Melbourne, and his postdoc Debadi Chakraborty calculated the acoustic modes, and Yue Zhang, a Rice graduate student from Peter Nordlander’s group at Rice simulated the optical/plasmonic properties. Bo Shuang of the Landes’ research group at Rice contributed to the analysis of the experimental data.”

The research was supported by the Robert A. Welch Foundation and the Department of Defense’s Multi-University Research Initiative. Additional co-authors include Zhang, Shuang, Nordlander and Halas, all of Rice; and Chakraborty and Sader, both of the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia.

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Large Mode Area Fibers

Optical fibers with relatively large mode areas and a single transverse mode or only a few modes.

For some applications, it is desirable to use optical fibers with a large mode area (LMA fibers) – often with single-mode guidance. Due to the reduced optical intensities, such fibers effectively have lower nonlinearities and a higher damage threshold, which makes them suitable for example for the Amplification of intense Pulses or single-frequency signals in Fiber amplifiers, or in case of passive fibers for delivery of such light. While standard single-mode fibers have an Effective Mode Area below 100 μm2, large mode area fibers reach values of hundreds or even thousands of μm2.

China laser innovation awards program now accepting nominations

The 2015 Ringier Technology Innovation Awards – Laser Industry is now open for applications up until January 4, 2015.

Now in its second year, the Awards consist of six categories: Lasers, Laser Systems for Production Engineering (Laser Cutting Systems, Laser Engraving Systems, Laser Marking Systems, and Laser Welding Systems), Laser System Components, System Peripherals of Laser Production Engineering, Optical Materials and Components, and 3D Printing. Only new products and solutions launched during 2013-2015 in the China market are eligible to enter the Awards selection process.

Following the entry and nomination stage, online peer voting and expert judging will take place January 9-25, 2015. Industry experts, including Dichen Li, Ph.D., Changjiang Professor, Xi’an Jiaotong University; Xiahui Tang, Professor, National Engineering Research Center For Laser Processing; Youliang Wang, Chairman, Laser Processing Committee of China Optical Society; Xiao Zhu, Chairman, Wuhan Laser Association of Optics Valley of China; and Qingmao Zhang, Vice Chairman, Laser Processing Committee of China Optical Society, will be among the independent panel of judges. Winners will be announced at the Awards ceremony on March 18, 2015, to coincide with Laser World of PHOTONICS 2015 in Shanghai, when all the winners, judges, industry professionals, and media will be present.

Organized by Industrial Laser Solutions China, Ringier Trade Media, and supported by Industrial Laser Solutions, these Awards are presented to a select group of innovators each year in China. The purpose of the Awards is to encourage, acknowledge, and reward those individuals and companies who have introduced and developed a new idea, a new methodology, a new product or a new technology for manufacturing production efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and user convenience, which might result in energy saving and more responsible clean manufacturing in the laser industry.

The Ringier Technology Industry Awards Series have been established since 2006 and cover nine different industries. They are recognized as being the most honest, transparent, and fairest of such Industry Awards in China. Nominations are open to all and the final selections are made by the panel of independent judges based solely on merit.

Pump and signal combiner for bi-directional pumping of all-fiber lasers and amplifiers(7)

Pump and signal combiner for bi-directional pumping of all-fiber lasers and amplifiers(7)

5. Simulations and results for a multi pump port configuration

So far, the modeling results consider a TF with only a single pump port. However, for monolithic high power fiber laser and amplifier systems, it is often required to provide multiple pump ports due to the limited output power of available fiber coupled pump diodes and the efforts to develop laser systems with redundancy. Thus, in this section, we investigate the impact of multiple pump ports on the coupling efficiency and the loss mechanism. The setup of each pump combiner is identical to the description in Section 2 (see Fig. 1), but with several additional ports placed around the cladding of the TF, leading to a fiber bundle. A schematic of a fiber combiner with multiple pump ports is shown in Fig. 7

Pump and signal combiner for bi-directional pumping of all-fiber lasers and amplifiers(7)

Fig. 7 Fiber combiner with multiple pump ports, PFF: pump feeding fiber with a piece of coreless intermediate fiber (IF) as described in Fig. 1, TF: target fiber, TP: transmitted power.

5.1 Simulations of the pump coupling efficiency

The experiments and simulations in Section 4 showed that for a pump combiner with a single pump port, a TL of 20 mm and a TR of 6 yields an excellent coupling efficiency in the range of 95%. In comparison, for a fiber band pass filter with multiple pump ports, the simulations for a TL of 20 mm (Fig. 8(a)

Pump and signal combiner for bi-directional pumping of all-fiber lasers and amplifiers(7)-2

Fig. 8 Simulated coupling efficiency for a pump combiner with up to 6 pump ports for (a) a TL of 20 mm and (b) a TL of 10 mm for a pump light input NA of 0.22.

) revealed that the pump coupling efficiency of the combined pump power depends on the number of pump ports and significantly on the choice of the TR. In the simulations the input pump light NA of the PFFs was 0.22. In general, it can be seen that the pump coupling efficiency decreases with each additional pump port. A lower TR yields a greater decrease of the pump coupling efficiency with each additional pump port than a higher TR. In the case of a TL of 20 mm and a TR of 2.5, the theoretically obtainable pump coupling efficiency of almost 90% decreases to 73%, if the number of pump ports increases from 1 to 6. However, as already mentioned, the increasing losses due to additional pump ports can be reduced with increasing TR. In Fig. 8(a) it can be clearly observed that for 6 pump ports and a TR of 6, a pump coupling efficiency of 90.2% can be achieved. For a TR higher than 6, it is not possible to achieve a significant improvement in pump coupling efficiency for multiple pump ports by increasing of the TR.

For a single pump port configuration it is already known that the pump coupling efficiency decreases with shorter TLs at constant TRs (Fig. 2(a)). However, for multiple pump ports a reduction of the TL leads to the advantage that the pump coupling efficiency of the combined pump power decreases less with each additional pump port, especially at lower TRs. The simulation results for a TL of 10 mm instead of a TL of 20 mm are presented in Fig. 8(b). A comparison of Fig. 8(a) and 8(b) shows: If the number of pump ports is increased from 1 to 6 at a TR of 2.5, the pump coupling efficiency experiences a decrease of 16.9 and 11.2% for a TL of 20 and 10 mm, respectively. Although the total power losses for a TL of 10 mm are higher than for a TL of 20 mm, the example reveals, that the decrease of the pump coupling efficiency due to additional pump ports can be reduced by using shorter TLs.

Besides having less available combined pump power, the additional pump power losses generated in comparison to a fiber combiner with a single pump port, corresponds to an enhanced risk of damaging the component due to additional thermal load. Hence, the loss mechanism for a fiber combiner with multiple pump ports needs to be investigated in more detail.

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Optical Filters: Filter stacks transmit wide-angle incident light without shifting wavelength(3)

To avoid the problem of color change versus incidence angle in an optical system, thin-film-coated filter elements can be replaced by a filter consisting of a stack of different filter glasses.

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Rugged, no coating degradation

Advantages of using a filter stack rather than a thin-film-coated optical element include wide-angle performance (see Fig. 2) and high durability. Because the glass itself performs the blocking, there is no concern of coating degradation due to extreme environmental shifts, contamination, or mishandling. Filter stacks are as durable as the glass they are made from, surviving aggressive cleaning methods, severe abrasion, salt/fog testing, humidity, and temperature cycling per durability standards of MIL-PRF-13830B, MIL-C-48497A, and MIL-C-675C.

Because all filter glass types have approximately the same index of refraction, there is no Fresnel loss as light propagates from one internal layer to another. However, as with any glass, the air-to-substrate interfaces will incur an ~8% total Fresnel loss for the component.

The addition of a broadband antireflection (BBAR) coating on each air-to-substrate surface can mostly eliminate this loss. The spectral range of the BBAR is designed to be much wider than the active spectral region of the 100G DWDM filter, so the stability of the transmission band will not be affected by changes in the angle of the filter. Blocking coatings can also be added if it is necessary to create steeper edges for in-band performance; however, doing so can affect the wide-angle performance at the edge wavelengths.

ColorLock filter stacks can be designed for spectral ranges from ultraviolet to near-infrared, with transmission exceeding 60% at the specified design wavelength. This transmission may not be as high as with dielectric filters, but is sufficient for applications with controlled and stable illumination, such as for machine vision, in which the consistency of wavelengths from wider incident angles is more important than transmission.

Having overcome considerable design challenges, we believe that these filter stacks can be used as an innovative solution in applications that demand consistent wavelengths from incident angles that are wide enough that dielectric filters would not be sufficient, and where the higher transmission that is afforded by dielectric filters is less important.

Fiber Optics Sensors Provide Early Warning for Landslides-DK Photonics

CASERTA, Italy, Sept. 29, 2014 — Fiber optic sensors could warn people of imminent landslides, potentially saving lives and reducing destruction.

A team at the Second University of Naples is developing sensor technology that could detect and monitor both large landslides and slow slope movements. The researchers hope to mitigate the effects of these major natural disasters, similar to the way hurricane tracking can prompt coastal evacuations.

Optical fiber sensors embedded in shallow trenches within slopes would detect small shifts in the soil, the researchers said. Landslides are always preceded by various types of pre-failure strains, they said.

While the magnitude of pre-failure strains depends on the rock or soil involved — ranging from fractured rock debris and pyroclastic flows to fine-grained soils — they are measurable. Electrical sensors have long been used for monitoring landslides, but that type of sensor can be easily damaged, the researchers said. Optical fiber is more robust, economical and sensitive.

“Distributed optical fiber sensors can act as a ‘nervous system’ of slopes by measuring the tensile strain of the soil they’re embedded within,” said professor Dr. Luigi Zeni.

The researchers are also combining several types of optical fiber sensors into a plastic tube that twists and moves under the forces of the pre-failure strains. This will allow them to monitor the movement and bending of the optical fiber remotely to determine if a landslide is imminent.

The use of fiber optic sensors “allows us to overcome some limitations of traditional inclinometers, because fiber-based ones have no moving parts and can withstand larger soil deformations,” Zeni said.

He added that such sensors can be used to cover several square kilometers and monitored continuously to pinpoint critical zones.

The team will present their research at Frontiers in Optics in Tucson, Ariz., next month.

DK Photonics – www.dkphotonics.com specializes in designing and manufacturing of high quality optical passive components mainly for telecommunication, fiber sensor and fiber laser applications,such as PLC Splitter, WDM, FWDM, CWDM, DWDM, OADM,Optical Circulator, Isolator, PM Circulator, PM Isolator, Fused Coupler, Fused WDM, Collimator, Optical Switch and Polarization Maintaining Components, Pump Combiner, High power isolator, Patch Cord and all kinds of connectors.

Market Forecast–MPO Connectors in 40/100GbE – DK Photonics

MPO fiber optic connectors used in North American 40/100GbE communication links are forecast to increase at a rate of 49.8% per year through 2018…

Aptos, CA (USA) – August 20, 2014 —ElectroniCast Consultants, a leading market & technology forecast consultancy addressing the fiber optics communications industry, today announced the release of their market forecast and analysis of the use of MPO fiber optic connectors in 40 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and 100GbE Standard communication network links. MPO is the industry acronym for “multi-fiber push on.”

“Applications such as video, virtualization, cloud computing, switching/routing and convergence are driving the need for bandwidth expansion in data centers, 4G/LTE (wireless) networks, and other deployments. We continue on the path of gradually migrating from 1G to 10G to 40G and 100G and eventually beyond; and the MPO connector is a key component in 40/100GbE network links, ” said Stephen Montgomery, director of the fiber optics components group at ElectroniCast.

The use of MPO fiber optic connectors in North American 40GbE and 100GbE networks is expected to reach $28 million in 2014, an increase of 84% over last year (2013). The use of 40/100GbE MPO connectors in North American is forecast to increase at annual rate of 49.8% per year over the 2013-20189 timeframe covered in the ElectroniCast market forecast. Market forecast data in the market study refers to consumption (use) for a particular calendar year; therefore, this data is not cumulative data.

The market forecast is segment by the use of single-mode and multimode 12-fiber and 24-fiber MPO connectors, and further broken-out by the use of connectors in 40G and the connectors used in 100G.

According to the market study, the North American 40/100GbE MPO connector market expansion will be dominated by the 12-fiber multimode MPO connectors, increasing at an average annual growth rate of 48.5 percent during the forecast period.

Huawei, Rostelecom collaborate on FTTH distribution boxes—DK Photonics

Huawei says it has collaborated with Russian service provider Rostelecom to develop floor distribution boxes (FDBs) for use in Rostelecom’s flexible fiber to the home (FTTH) deployments. The FDBs will help improve the efficiency of the operator’s FTTH deployments, particularly in sparsely populated areas, Huawei says.

Rostelecom is under a mandate from the Russian government to connect 13 million CWDM Module users by 2015, Huawei says. This task is complicated by the fact that much of the operator’s footprint covers rural areas.

To improve deployment efficiency, Huawei says it recommended what it calls “the thin-covered network deployment model.” According to the model, fiber-optic networks are constructed to user access points and the FDBs, the latter of which are used as the interface between the outside plant and the inside plant. As the network expands and more users are connected, pre-made drop cables can be used for plug-and-play, quick service provisioning.

The customized FDBs were designed for success-based deployment. Rostelecom can deploy FDBs that provide access to a single user, then add connections as many as four or eight users as take rates improve. Technicians can complete the expansion in one minute without the use of tools, Huawei says.

Huawei and Rostelecom will further collaborate on other network elements, including the closure, optical splitter, and fiber distribution terminal (FDT), the technology provider added.

For more information on FTTx products, visit the DK Photonics Website.