Disk laser: A new generation of industrial laser

While the Disk laser concept was invented in the early 90s, the first industrial products were available in the beginning of this decade. Since then, the disk laser is used in mass production and serves a large variety of application fields. The output power per disk has continually increased and reached a level of 2.5 kW per disk in 2007. As of today, the disk principle has not reached any fundamental limit regarding output power per disk or beam quality. In 2009 TRUMPF released a new series of industrial disk lasers. This series is based on an output power of 4 kW per disk. Scalability of output power is achieved by serial coupling of several disks without influencing the beam quality of the system, with output powers of up to 16 kW at work piece. The new disk laser series offers great architectural advantages over prior generations, which has allowed a considerable reduction of investment cost and footprint. The TruDisk series incorporates TRUMPF’s new generation passively cooled diodes, which have the same life expectancy of passively cooled single emitters, resulting in a significant reduction in operating costs. This paper will explain important details of the new product line and process relevant features of the system, like pump diode arrangement, resonator design and integrated beam guidance.