IPG Photonics Announces Major Expansion of Ytterbium Pulsed Fiber Laser Offerings

IPG Laser GmbH, a subsidiary of IPG Photonics Corp., announced a major expansion of its Ytterbium pulsed fiber laser product line, including four new pulsed laser product lines now available and an additional two product lines planned for release next year. The new pulsed lasers build on the success of the company's best-selling pulsed fiber lasers, and are targeted at marking and new materials processing applications in the manufacturing of silicon wafers, plasma and LCD display screens, and other devices.

The pioneer in fiber laser technology, IPG Photonics has sold thousands of superior and reliable YLP and YLP-MOPA pulsed lasers for over a decade. IPG also has introduced new 30W and 50W average power models, adding to the currently available 5W, 10W and 20W average power devices in the YLP series. YLP lasers now are available with pulse durations of 25ns, 50ns and 200ns, in addition to the currently available 100ns devices. The frequency ranges from 10kHz to 1MHz with various collimator choices. Peak powers of up to 30kW now are available in the product line.

"The new pulsed lasers, which are application driven, greatly expand the opportunities for IPG's many qualified OEMs and integrators, as well as end-users," said IPG Photonics CEO Dr. Valentin P. Gapontsev. "With the expanded pulsed laser line, IPG's fiber lasers provide an alternative to conventional lamp-pumped and diode-pumped crystal pulsed lasers in a range of applications requiring higher powers because of the proven cost, efficiency, beam quality and reliability of fiber lasers."

The new pulsed lasers provide several major advantages, including speed, quality, and depth of laser marking and engraving. They also can be used in high-speed percussion drilling with minimal thermal effects, high-speed cutting of medical stents, processing of silicon wafers and a variety of applications involving the removal of thin coatings, including several applications required by the manufacturers of plasma and LCD display screens.

The new YLP-C series provides performance similar to the YLP product line, but has much higher electro-optical efficiency, a more compact design and a wide range of sophisticated pulse management functions.

In the high power pulsed product family (YLP-HP series), IPG also added 300W, 400W and 500W lasers with frequency ranges improving to 50kHz, adding to the 10mJ, 100W and 200W devices introduced previously. Pulse durations of these lasers can be specified by the customer from 200ns to 1ms. In the YLP-HP series, IPG offers three models with 40mJ and 50mJ pulses at 10kHz with pulse durations from 150ns to 1ms, as well as 100mJ per pulse with 1kW average power.

Additionally, IPG introduced the YLP-PSM pulsed laser product family, IPG's high quality and low cost, state-of-the-art, mode-locked picosecond laser for industrial applications. The first model produces peak powers up to 30kW at an average power of 10W, a pulse frequency of 35MHz, and a pulse duration of 10ps. The Company is developing a 50W average power version for introduction in the future.

IPG Laser GmbH expects to release additional pulsed laser lines in late 2007 to early 2008, including a 150kW peak power laser, one to 20ns tunable laser (YLP-T series) for high contrast marking, and another picosecond laser family (YLP-PST series), which offers, for the first time, direct triggering of 50ps pulses with peak power up to 250kW.

IPG Photonics