Processing of surfaces with kilowatt level nanosecond pulsed fiber lasers

This paper reviews another important development in fiber lasers: kilowatt level pulsed lasers with pulse energy up to 100 mJ and pulse duration in the 30-100ns range. These lasers were developed for a range of surface processing applications involving coating removal, cleaning and surface texturing. The work presented here shows that the phenomena produced by this laser can range from surface cleaning with no melting to heavily melted surfaces with significant ablation and material removal. Details on how this range of surfaces is produced at very high industrially relevant rates are shown and results on the characterisation of these surfaces using contact angle, SEM and EDS techniques are presented. Current and future applications are also discussed.