August 9, 2005, Burbach, Germany--IPG Laser GmbH announced that IMG GmbH, a developer and manufacturer of shipbuilding production equipment, demonstrated IPG's 10-kW fiber laser welding 6-m and 12-m-long micro ship panels at IMG's July 11 open house for the shipbuilding industry.
In a hybrid welding process using standard welding heads, IMG showed that a 10-kW fiber laser can weld shipyard steel at high speeds--6-mm plates at 3.2 m/min and 10-mm plates at 1.5 m/min using 7.8-kW and 10-kW laser power, respectively.
The laser used in the production process at IMG was a 10 kW IPG fiber laser operating at 1060 nm with a beam parameter product of 11 mm x mrad delivered through a 50-m fiber with a diameter of 200 microns. Fiber lasers are simple in construction and cannot drift out of alignment, providing increased robustness and reliability in production conditions.
IMG, located in the Rostock, Germany's major shipbuilding center, will support its industrial shipyard customers in process development using the higher power levels of the fiber laser. IMG plans to use the 10-kW fiber lasers for hybrid high-speed welding of shipyard steel from 5 to 15 mm in the production of complete panel-welding devices.
The lasers' wall-plug efficiency is greater than 30%--another advantage for production environments, as both electrical use and waste-heat output are reduced. IPG stated that it sells ytterbium fiber-laser systems from 10 kW to 30 kW in output for a variety of materials-processing applications in different industries.