From 2007, China's first home-made fiber laser counted from the beginning, the road of fiber laser localization has been going for 16 years, industrial lasers successfully developed from the past constraints to today's leading - 2023, China's fiber laser market share of domestic production has been close to 80%.
The development of fiber laser can not be separated from the development of the pump source, if the fiber laser is compared to the heart of the whole set of laser processing system, then the pump source is equivalent to the heart of the fiber laser. Today Xiaokai will take you to review this "laser heart" of the development process.
China is almost the same period with foreign countries to start the exploration of semiconductor laser technology, scientific research level has been to maintain a considerable level, but the progress of industrialization is relatively backward, until around 2000 before and after the emergence of semiconductor laser enterprises, was founded in 2003 Keprin Optoelectronics is the earliest of a number of them.
At that time, the application of high-power semiconductor lasers just began to show good momentum of development, but the coupling package market is monopolized by a few U.S. companies, domestic enterprises and research institutes, despite the indicators and foreign products close to the market is still a blank. 2004, Keplin took the lead in overcoming the difficulties of fiber-coupled semiconductor lasers in mass production. Especially 808nm semiconductor lasers, with the cost performance and delivery ability beyond similar foreign products quickly opened up the European and American markets, realizing the mass export of lasers made in China, and thus becoming an internationally renowned supplier in the field of laser dentistry. For a long time, the world's major dental medical equipment manufacturers have been actively maintaining cooperation with Keplin.
The same year that we entered the medical field coincided with the culmination of the research and development of CTP (Computer to Plate) technology in the domestic printing industry. This technology utilizes laser scanning imaging, which improves the accuracy and speed of plate making and reduces the cost of plate making, and is therefore sought after by the printing industry. However, at that time, all the technical patents of this technology were held by foreign enterprises, and domestic printing enterprises did not have the slightest say in the market, and had to accept the "sky-high" price for the technology. Against this background, Caplin faced the blockade and suppression of foreign enterprises, and with its own technological accumulation, together with its customers, gradually researched and developed, and solved the CTP-related problems. 2005, Caplin, with the laser integrated with the Laser Dense Arrangement Module, snatched the order from many competitors, and accelerated the entry of domestic printing industry into the era of CTP. At present, this technology has almost fully replaced the laser phototypesetting technology, and Caplin occupies most of the market share.
In 2007, the domestic fiber laser industry chain was still in its infancy, and almost all fiber lasers and semiconductor pump sources available in the domestic market were imported, and the price of the imported pump sources was extremely high and the delivery cycle was long, which made the domestic enterprises engaged in the research and development of high-power lasers and scientific research institutes to face the predicament of "lack of pumps" for a long time. Because of the lack of pumps, lasers are difficult to get on the market. Because of the lack of pumps, lasers are difficult to volume, and further constraints on the bargaining power of domestic enterprises.
Although the market demand was not large at that time, Kaplin keenly found the opportunity of pump source localization. With the accumulation of technology that has been proven in the market in the past, Kipling completed the development and practice of high-performance chip packaging technology in combination with the characteristics of fiber laser, and took the lead in launching the 10W pump source. This move has strongly promoted the landing of domestic fiber laser, breaking the monopoly of foreign manufacturers in the field of pump sources and fiber lasers in China in one fell swoop.
At the end of 2008, the central government launched a 4 trillion plan, China has entered the era of large infrastructure. The most far-reaching impact of large infrastructure on the laser industry is the laser cutting plate: the year-on-year increase in demand for metal processing combined with the advantages of laser cutting metal, for the development of the laser cutting machine market has brought enormous space.
Prior to this, laser cutting is mainly CO2 gas and YAG solid-based, fiber laser due to low power, is only regarded as a "thin plate" tool, coupled with imported equipment is extremely expensive, did not get the market attention. But part of the industry firmly optimistic about the future of fiber laser, and successive development of 3000W and other higher power fiber laser cutting machine, a little prying laser cutting market. 2014, fiber laser market share began to exceed the CO2 laser, a new generation of mainstream market.
In the fiber laser from weak to strong, gradually become the mainstream of the market in a few years, the market is almost all imported fiber laser (import share perennial maintained at more than 90%). Fiber laser localization road is limited by low pump power and immature beam combining technology, completely unable to shake the status of imported products. But because this direction has been very obvious, one after another, there are new enterprises to enter the field of semiconductor laser pump source, coupled with the Keprin and other old enterprises to further increase the technical research efforts, in 2014, the domestic 200W pump source was introduced, a strong support for domestic kilowatt laser in cutting, welding and other fields to the imported products to launch the challenge.
The domestic 200W pump source that appeared in 2014 not only enhanced the competitiveness of domestic kilowatt-class lasers in terms of quality and performance, but also laid the foundation for the outbreak of domestic light source enterprises.Around 2015, a large number of fiber laser manufacturers with their own characteristics emerged in China, and after the domestic pump source and high-power beam combining technology were overcome, the domestic high-power lasers showed the situation of a hundred flowers blossoming in a short time. In 2018, domestic 10,000-watt lasers were applied in the industrial market, and domestic lasers below 3,000W have been able to arm wrestle with imported light sources.
Along with the increasing power of domestic lasers, the power upgrade of the pump source has not stopped - 200W, 330W, until 2020, Caplin once again led the industry, innovatively applying the theory of polarization beam combining and dense arrangement to the pump source, which significantly improves the power density and integration degree of fiber lasers, and successfully puts the 660W pump source to the market. Pump source power to further enhance to ensure the performance and quality of high-power lasers, but also successfully domestic light source and imported light source wrestling field to the 10,000-watt level, boosting domestic lasers set off a round of "10,000-watt storm". In September of that year, Shanghai Industrial Fair, 10,000-watt lasers have been the standard equipment of all fiber laser enterprises, and domestic 30,000-watt, 40,000-watt almost all over every booth.
In 2021, Kipling once again realized the technology leadership, launched the kilowatt-class pump source, and also brought China's pump source industry into the kilowatt era. The most significant result of this era is to promote the miniaturization of fiber lasers, and single-module 12kW lasers began to appear in large numbers. On the one hand, the kilowatt level of high-power pumping effectively reduces the number of 10,000-watt laser module requirements, 10,000-watt level to achieve a single module, 20,000 watts, 30,000 watts of the volume of the past began to become smaller, opened up the development of fiber lasers in the pursuit of high power, high brightness in addition to the third way - miniaturization; on the other hand, with the handheld On the other hand, with the hot market of handheld laser welding, smaller laser can significantly reduce the transportation and operation difficulty of handheld laser welding machine, and thus inspired some laser enterprises to open the ultimate pursuit of small size.
In 2022, Kipling, which has been an industry leader in the field of pump sources, released the smaller Lightning series of fiber lasers. This disruptive size reduction had a huge downstream impact, directly changing the market landscape for handheld laser welding, while also bringing major benefits to companies targeting laser cutter exports. Despite the fact that mature products were already available in 2022, Keplin kept the core technology secret until 2023 - the key to the successful slimming of the Lightning Series lasers lies in the CTC chip integration technology, which also announces that the pump source market has been upgraded again into the highly integrated pumping that dominates the 4.0 era. With the CTC chip integration technology, Kipling launched a pump source with a single pump power of up to 5,000W in 2023, which will be applied to a new generation of fiber lasers.
Reviewing the development history of pump source, we can find that every important milestone in the localization of fiber laser is inseparable from the technological innovation of domestic pump source. As the promoter of domestic pump source, Keprin Optoelectronics has always maintained its prediction and technology leadership in the industry, which has provided a strong guarantee for domestic fiber laser to win in the competition.
