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SPI Announces Scalable Fiber Laser Building Blocks; Expanding The Applications Space of Fiber Lasers, mWs to kWs

Posted on: Sunday, 22 June 2003, 06:00 CDT

MUNICH, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 23, 2003--SPI today announced the release of the first products from its redPower(TM) fiber laser family: a series of modulatable CW products to 30W, a short-pulsed product family with peak powers starting at 25kW and energies in excess of 1mJ, and a 100W modulatable CW unit. The redPower(TM) product range is designed to provide the highest single-mode beam quality in a scalable, building-block architecture to meet the needs of OEMs and systems integrators in the industrial, analytical, and aerospace markets.

Fiber lasers offer many advantages over conventional laser technology, most notably: high single-mode beam quality, building-block scalability and reliability leading to a lower total cost of ownership. Fiber lasers have the power and precision for many different applications: from cutting/welding and product marking in the industrial and semi-conductor sectors to a range of analytical applications. Their compact size enables them to be easily integrated into existing equipment. SPI's redPower products contain patented specialty fibers that expand the power handling and pulse energy extraction capability of fiber, while being price-competitive to existing technology.

SPI believes its redPower product series offers the highest short-pulse energy available from a fiber laser. The CW products introduced today, including the 100W building block, are based around GTWave(TM) Technology. GTWave fiber offers efficient, high absorption cladding pumping while providing a scalable, simple, reliable and volume-based architecture. Furthermore, all redPower products contain SPI's fiber Bragg grating technology that allows ultra-fine optimization of the final laser cavity.

The redPower product specifications are targeted at current and future industry application needs, offering scalability and performance flexibility.

SPI's Director of Business Development, Stuart Woods, commented, "The industry is rapidly recognizing the benefits offered by fiber lasers and SPI's advanced technology is not only expanding the traditional laser applications space, but also opening up new application areas. Our proven capability offers OEMs access to fiber laser technology with radical economics, based on our unique specialty fiber and laser assembly and provides scalability from mWs to kWs."

SPI has samples available for trial today and is accepting orders for production in Q3, 2003.

About SPI

SPI designs and manufactures optical components, delivering state-of-the art products that are driving down the cost of ownership for its customers in the industrial, aerospace, analytical, communications and sensing markets. SPI's innovations in high-power fiber lasers, amplification and wavelength management are underpinned by its unique, patented specialty fiber technology and manufacturing capability. SPI's current product range includes: fiber lasers and laser arrays, high-power optical amplifiers and sources, filters (fiber Bragg gratings), combining optics and dispersion compensators. SPI's gratings have the world's lowest distortion and combined with their ultra-low dispersion, make them very easy to use.

Contact

Christine Skellon, SPI (Southampton Photonics), Phi House, Enterprise Road, Chilworth Science Park, Southampton, SO16 7NS, UK Tel: +44 (0)23 8076 5416

Laser 2003 - Stand B2.102

christine.skellon@spioptics.com

Don Spalinger: SPI (Southampton Photonics, Inc.), 170 Knowles Drive, Suite 212, Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA. Tel: +1 408 866 0472 x 288

www.spioptics.com

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