Dynamic Pulsing of a MOPA Fiber Laser

摘要

Dynamic Pulsing is demonstrated using a pulsed MOPA fiber laser at 1064nm. The output of the MOPA laser is a pulsed profile consisting of a burst of closely spaced pulses. Tests were performed under several materials with pulse bursts ranging from 10ns to 1μs and operating from 500kHz down to single shot. In particular, percussion drilling in stainless steel is demonstrated showing improvements in quality and speed of the process. These profiles allow high flexibility and optimization of the process addressing the specificity of the end application. Dynamic Pulsing allows the same MOPA fiber laser to be used in diverse materials as well as different processes such us marking, drilling, scribing and engraving. The pulsed fiber laser used in this study is a MOPA-DY by Multiwave Photonics. It is based on a modulated seed laser followed by a series of fiber amplifiers and ending with an optically isolated collimator. This pulsed laser model has an output in such a way that each trigger produces a fast burst of pulses, with a repetition frequency within the burst of the order of tens of MHz. Within the burst it is possible to change the number of pulses, the individual pulse profile, burst pulse period and even to generate non-periodic burst pulse separations. The laser allows full freedom for all these combinations. The study here reported compares the impact of pulse peak power, number of pulses within a burst and the pulse burst period, on process quality (heat affected zone, debris, hole uniformity) and drilling yield.