Processing of Highly Reflective Materials

Abstract

Fiber lasers have become more accepted for industrial laser applications all around the world. For many years, companies and universities have developed new generations of fiber lasers which compete with other laser types such as CO 2 lasers. As the market for CO 2 lasers shrinks, the solid‐state laser market expands due to advantages such as higher efficiency, high beam quality and the ability to process highly reflective material such as copper and copper‐alloys. Processing such materials would be difficult with a CO 2 laser due to the lower absorption characteristics of these metals at their wavelength, but opens a whole new range of laser applications for fiber lasers.