New Laser-Combiners from AOFR

AOFR, an Aegis Lightwave company and a leading supplier of fused fiber-couplers and laser-combiners for the communications, test equipment, industrial, sensing, military and aerospace markets, announced today a new laser-combiner product line with high-power handling capability in a small form-factor and available in a broad range of transmission wavelengths.

This new product line will be on display at OFC/NFOEC 2010 in San Diego, CA in Aegis Booth #419.

The new products from AOFR combine up to 7 pump-lasers, each with an input power of 25 W, into a wide variety of fiber geometries as well as polarization-maintaining fibers. The laser-combiners come in (6+1)x1 or Nx1 configurations in a small 5 x 5 x 50 mm form-factor that enable fiber-laser designs with a compact footprint and energy-efficient air-cooled architecture. The laser-combiners can be designed for a wide variety of fiber-laser output wavelengths including 1064, 1550 and 2050 nm, addressing a broad range of applications in industrial, medical and military markets.

“We bring to the industrial laser market our decades of experience in telecom where we have a proven track record for high-quality and high-reliability products and where we have shown the ability to scale manufacturing to high volumes,” said David Moser, PLM for Laser-Combiners, AOFR. “Working with a reliable laser-combiner supplier will be a key factor enabling fiber-laser vendors to meet the rapid growth in demand whilst continuing to achieve record levels of output power.”

High-power laser-combiners are building blocks of next-generation kilowatt class fiber-lasers that are gradually replacing existing gas and solid-state lasers in materials processing applications such as cutting, drilling, engraving and welding. Depending on the application, fiber-lasers are favored for one or several of the following benefits: improved beam uniformity, portability, compactness and low power consumption. Fiber-lasers can also be designed to operate at 2050 nm to greatly lower the risk of retinal damage, a highly desirable feature targeted at military and medical market segments.

AOFR was established in 1984 to develop and commercialize fiber-optic component technology and has developed and sold fused fiber devices since 1988. During this period, AOFR developed unique and highly automated workstations for manufacturing fused biconic taper (FBT) couplers, wavelength division multiplexers (WDMs), laser combiners and fiber Bragg gratings (FBG). AOFR's superior design and packaging of fused fiber components has made AOFR one of the leading suppliers of high-quality, high-reliability fiber-optic components to worldwide markets for over two decades.