IPG Photonics opens kilowatt-laser factory
December 14, 2004, Oxford, MA--IPG Photonics Corporation, which produces high-power fiber lasers, announced that its subsidiary, IPG Laser GmbH, has opened a new factory in Burbach, Germany dedicated to manufacturing its multikilowatt fiber lasers. The 20,000-square-foot state-of-the-art clean-room facility substantially increases production capacity for IPG's high-power fiber lasers, enabling high-volume industrial production.
While termed fiber lasers, IPG's multikilowatt emitters are actually not single lasers, but contain multiple single-fiber lasers each in the hundreds-of-watts domain, the outputs of which are channeled into a single multimode output fiber. The resulting beam quality of the light exiting the output fiber can be as high or higher than that of other types of high-power industrial lasers of similar wavelength.
Since IPG's introduction of kilowatt-size fiber lasers in 2001, demand for diode-pumped fiber lasers have grown. According to IPG, many industries now employ IPG's commercial lasers for various materials-processing applications, including automobile, shipbuilding, pipeline laying, construction, and aerospace. The new electronic-grade manufacturing facility is aimed at meeting increasing customer demand for IPG's kilowatt lasers. Worldwide, IPG currently has approximately 280,000 square feet of manufacturing space.
"With our new factory in Burbach, IPG can now produce more than 30 kilowatt-class lasers per month. It will be sufficient to fill multiple orders in 2005 for such lasers from our growing backlog," said CEO Valentin Gapontsev. "Now we are building a similar facility in Massachusetts to meet demand for 2006. Over the last three years, IPG has built strategic fully self-sufficient capacities for unique fiber, fiberoptic, and optoelectronic components, including a factory for mass production of what we believe are the highest efficiency and brightness and the most reliable pump laser diodes in production today." Gapontsev also stated that IPG will deploy more than 3,000 different kinds of fiber lasers this year.