High-power YAG laser and its applications

Laser beams have been noticed as new heat resources with high energy concentration, which are different from plasma and arc. Conventionally, the only kW class industrial laser has been a carbon dioxide (CO2) laser. However, recently, several new high power lasers other than CO2 laser have been developed so that new methods of laser material processing have come out. As for YAG lasers, formerly, cw or pulse YAG lasers of several hundreds W class were used for welding or cutting of electrical appliants or cutting of thin metal plates. Now, the power has been raised to 5 - 6 kW, which enables YAG lasers to apply wider applications of material processing in many industrial fields, such as automobile industries, heavy industries and so on. It is a flexible fiber delivery that is the most remarkable advantage of YAG laser, which can be applied to ordinary machinery tools and robotic systems and makes it possible to deliver laser power to remote locations. Moreover, a shorter wavelength (1.06 micrometer) of YAG lasers than that of CO2 lasers is appropriate to metal processing. Figure 1 shows an example of YAG laser processing system utilizing those advantages. Also in IHI, the processing with YAG lasers has been studied for their practical application which has already succeeded in some sections such as cladding, repair welding and subdividing of nuclear power plants making use of YAG lasers' properties of fiber delivery of beam. Moreover, underwater processing technique is studied for practical use. In this paper, the examples of YAG laser application technology were described.