Tag Archives: Fiber Laser

Drilling of Cooling Holes by Using High-Power Ultrashort Pulsed Laser Radiation

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By Hermann Uchtmann

One of the main applications for laser drilling is the manufacturing of cooling holes with diameters of e.g., 500 µm in turbine components such as turbine blades and vanes or combustion chambers. Nowadays, these cooling holes are drilled by using flash lamp pumped Nd:YAG laser radiation and partially by using QCW fiber laser radiation with pulse durations in the range of 200 µs up to a few ms. The main deficit of these conventional technologies is the appearance of recast layers with thicknesses up to a few 100 µm at the hole wall. These recast layers arise due to the melt-dominated drilling process. During operation of the drilled components, the recast layers can chip off or can be the initial point for cracks. Both effects lead to a shorter lifetime of the component. Continue reading →

A Technical and Commercial Comparison of Fiber Laser and CO2 Laser Cutting

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By John Powell, Alexander Kaplan

Since the advent of commercial fiber and disk laser cutting machines, there has been a lot of controversy about the performance of these devices – particularly in comparison to their more established CO2 counterparts. In the early days, the sales staff promoting fiber technology would often declare that the new lasers would completely take over from CO2 technology very quickly – but this has not happened. Even taking into account the entrenched position of the older technology, fiber and disk lasers have not been as widely accepted as was predicted, although they have been proven to out-perform CO2 lasers in certain important areas.

This paper presents a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of both types of cutting technology from a commercial point of view – written from the perspective of a laser cutting job shop owner trying to decide between buying a fiber or CO2 laser cutting machine. A quantitative comparison of the two machines is surprisingly difficult – having given several talks on the subject the best analogy we can give is that it’s like comparing a sports car with a family car. Continue reading →

High Deposition Rate Laser Cladding – Recent Advancements

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By Jari Tuominen, Jonne Näkki, Henri Pajukoski, Tuomo Peltola, Petri Vuoristo

Laser cladding is currently done with 3-6 kW gas and solid state lasers. Components to be clad or repaired are usually small or some discrete regions in larger components. Net deposition rates are typically 1-2 kg/h. In large area coating applications, conventional coating methods such as thermal spraying (HVOF, HVAF) and overlay welding (SAW) prevail due to higher cost efficiency based mainly on high productivity and low capital costs. For applications such as boiler tube panels in power generation and massive hydraulics in off-shore and mining industries, coating properties produced by conventional coating methods are often insufficient. Continue reading →

Fiber Laser Blanking of Coil Strips at Extreme-Speed Extreme-Power

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By: Dr. Charles Caristan and Jay Finn

Air Liquide Industrial US LP, Automatic Feed Company

The blanking process consisting of cutting flat panels directly out of a metal coil is practiced in the automotive industry to the tune of 10 MM tons of steel coils processed each year for the North American market alone.  Up until now, CO2 laser-cutting technology is almost exclusively used to produce low-volume prototype blanks, whereas when it comes to high volume production, nearly 100% is still manufactured exclusively mechanically with shears and press die-blanking systems which hold high throughput and piece cost advantages.

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Leading Technology for the Customer’s Benefit – Laser Processing Heads for Welding and Cutting

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By: Dr. Markus Kogel-Hollacher

For decades Precitec has been the leading manufacturer of processing heads suitable for all laser sources including fiber lasers, disc lasers, CO2 lasers, diode lasers, Nd:YAG lasers from powers ranging from the typically used power spectrum up to 30 kW. These are directly applicable to industrial laser materials processing in order to meet the highest criteria for quality in a given application. To meet our customer’s needs Precitec is continuously improving the performance of their products meeting the requirements modern laser sources demand with respect to beam quality, brightness, and laser power. At ICALEO 2009 Precitec will report on the latest generation of industrial solutions for laser processing heads for welding and cutting taking into account the physical boundaries given by the laser radiation on one hand and on the other the practicability of a modular design with respect to the integration of the processing tool in various industrial applications.

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