Material Processing with a 3kW Single Mode Fibre Laser

Intended for novel machining strategies in high power laser machining, a continuous wave single mode fibre laser (YLR-3000-SM, IPG) with a laser power up to 3 kW and a brilliant beam quality M 2 < 1.2 has been applied in the presented work. Laser beam focusing was realised by industrial standard machining setups: large area scanning systems (RLSK; HighYAG), high speed scanning systems (Superscan; Raylase) and a stationary welding optic (YW50; Precitec). Laser welding of stainless steel has been investigated to compare significant interacting mechanism for different machining technologies. Butt joint welding and bead-on-plate welding have been applied under a range of various processing parameters, such as objective focal length, processing velocity, and laser output power. Ablation cutting on stainless steel and high-purity Al 2 O 3 ceramics has been investigated subjected to various machining conditions. For discussion, the dependence of important laser processing parameters onto ablation depth has been indicated, and texture analyses show the material behaviour before and after the machining process.