Fiber Laser Or Solid Laser, How To Choose?

For the domestic situation, the technology and development of Fiber Laser are relatively mature, if the use of fiber laser can consider domestic, the delivery time and cost are better, if you want to choose solid laser, then generally choose foreign, because the domestic solid laser start relatively late, and subject to the limitations of technology, Domestic solid state laser manufacturers with scale are relatively few, often difficult to find suitable products. So what are the differences between solid-state lasers and fiber lasers?

1. Differences in application scenarios

Both solid-state laser and fiber laser can be used in major laser processing fields such as marking, cutting, drilling, welding, and additive manufacturing. However, due to the characteristics of fiber laser and solid-state laser, there are differences in specific application scenarios in each subdivision field:

Micromachining field

Most applications in this field use solid-state lasers, and pulsed fiber lasers can be used in some cases. The solid-state laser can convert infrared light into green light, ultraviolet light, and deep ultraviolet light in the resonant cavity through the frequency-doubling crystal and output the short-wavelength laser. The short-wavelength laser is the development trend of micro-machining laser, which has a low thermal effect and high energy utilization efficiency, so as to effectively improve the machining accuracy and realize ultra-fine ultra-machining. Solid-state lasers with their short wavelength (ultraviolet, deep ultraviolet), short pulse width (picosecond, femtosecond), and peak power characteristics are mainly used in non-metallic materials and thin, brittle metal materials such as precision machining fields. In addition, solid-state lasers are widely used in cutting-edge scientific research in environmental, medical, military, and other fields.

Macro processing field

This field mainly uses fiber laser, and generally does not use solid laser. Continuous fiber laser with high average power is widely used in thick metal material cutting, welding, and other macro processing. Continuous laser has a high degree of penetration in the field of macro processing, which has gradually replaced the traditional processing mode.

To sum up:

(1) Pulsed fiber laser can be used in the field of micromachining, but because it can only output infrared light with long wavelength, small single-pulse energy, obvious thermal effect, relatively low processing accuracy, and some materials can not absorb infrared light, its application range is limited, so the application range of pulsed fiber laser in the field of micromachining is limited. Generally, it is only used in micro-machining scenarios with machining accuracy greater than 20 microns;

(2) Solid state laser is widely used in the field of micromachining, because it can convert infrared light output green light, ultraviolet light, and other wavelengths of light beam through the way of nonlinear crystal frequency doubling, a wide range of materials, good beam quality, single pulse energy, small thermal effect, can achieve "cold machining", It can be applied to high-precision micro-machining scenes with machining accuracy less than 20 microns (machining accuracy up to nanometers), so it has strong technical advantages in the field of micro-machining.

⑶The main types of fiber lasers are continuous fiber lasers. Continuous fiber laser with its characteristics of high output power is widely used in the processing accuracy in the millimeter level above the macro processing field, such as industrial metal laser cutting, welding, and macro processing of laser equipment demand is large, macro processing market capacity is larger than micro processing;

In general:

Solid-state laser, large volume, easy to be affected by external vibration, temperature changes, and other factors, poor stability, difficult to maintain, and high maintenance costs, but the output peak power can be very high, good beam quality, high sex to noise ratio.

Fiber laser, compact structure, stable performance, not easily affected by external interference, easy to operate, maintenance, beam quality is poor, sex noise ratio is poor, peak power is difficult to do high.

2. different users

Fiber laser with its characteristics of high output power is mainly used in the field of macro processing (laser macro processing generally refers to the laser beam on the processing of the object of influence range of millimeter size and shape processing; Micromachining generally refers to the size and shape machining with accuracy up to micron or even nanometer scale); Solid-state laser has the advantages of short-wavelength, narrow pulse width, peak power and so on, which is widely used in the field of micromachining, resulting in a certain difference between solid-state laser and fiber laser users.

Solid-state laser and fiber laser have their respective application fields. There is no direct competition between the two in most fields. In the field of metal material processing where the micromachining field ovulates, traditional methods or optical fiber lasers are generally used in this field when the metal reaches a certain thickness due to cost reasons. Solid lasers are only used in the scene where the metal thickness is thin or the processing requirements are high and the cost is not sensitive. In addition, the competitive overlap of the two is low, solid laser is mainly used for non-metallic materials (glass, ceramics, plastics, polymers, packaging, other brittle materials, etc.) processing, in the field of metal materials for high precision requirements and relatively insensitive to the cost of the scene.

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