As we all know, fiber laser has become one of the main industrial lasers in the world. Compared with semiconductor lasers, solid-state lasers and CO2 lasers, fiber lasers have accounted for more than 50% of the global industrial market.

In the past, punch and plasma cutting were mainly used in the field of plate processing, in which punch was used for thin plates and ion cutting was used for thick plates. However, with the continuous development of fiber laser technology, fiber laser cutting has a great impact on traditional processing technology and CO2 laser processing.

Compared with traditional punch processing, fiber laser is non-contact processing, which produces less stress and low noise. It can process high reactivity materials such as aluminum and copper in batch; Compared with CO2 laser processing, the electro-optic conversion efficiency of fiber laser reaches 40%, the power consumption is only 1 / 3 of that of CO2 laser, and the processing speed is increased by 2 ~ 3 times.

In only 5-6 years, fiber laser has set off a technological change of laser cutting with various technical advantages. Nowadays, the demand for fiber lasers is increasing, and the application fields also begin to penetrate into the basic fields such as automobile, ship, aerospace and so on.

At present, the competition in the domestic fiber laser market has become white hot. Foreign brands such as IPG, rofin, Ennai, Yena and SPI still occupy most of the domestic market share. It is roughly estimated that the sales volume is about 3 billion yuan, accounting for two-thirds of the domestic fiber laser market, of which IPG is more than 2.4 billion yuan. Although IPG is still in a dominant position in the global market share of high-power fiber lasers, IPG will not dominate in the future, because other laser industry giants have successfully entered the field of fiber lasers through mergers and acquisitions of some fiber laser companies.

In 2016, American coherent company acquired rofin, a manufacturer of high-performance industrial laser light source and laser solutions and devices. Rofin previously acquired nufern, an American special optical fiber manufacturer, dILAS, a semiconductor laser manufacturer, and optoskand, a Swedish company specializing in optical fiber products. It can be seen that through M & A, coherent has formed a good vertical integration ability.

In addition, German TRUMPF acquired SPI, a British fiber laser manufacturer, and JK laser, a British company, and successfully entered the field of high-power fiber lasers; JDSU of the United States cooperates with Amada, a Japanese manufacturer of metal processing machine tools, to develop fiber lasers with a power of up to 4kw; Nlight company of the United States acquired liekki, a Finnish manufacturer of special optical fibers. It can be predicted that the competition in the high-power fiber laser industry is becoming more and more intense.

China is the world's largest industrial laser market, accounting for 24% of the global market. Not only foreign enterprises have regarded China as an important strategic market, but also local enterprises have accumulated a lot and accelerated the process of localization. There are more than 20 local brands, big and small. In the fierce competition with foreign brands, they continue to make breakthroughs, find suitable market segments and seek continuous development. The main domestic fiber laser suppliers include Ruike laser and Chuangxin laser, with performance of more than 400 million yuan, forming a double leader in industry development; Jept has consolidated its position in the industry by virtue of MOPA laser. Lianpin laser and Zhongke Guanghui have developed rapidly, among which Zhongke Guanghui has 6kW products in continuous laser. Other brands, including Shanghai Feibo, Wuhan Anyang, Guoshen optoelectronics, 46 Institute, Oriental radium, oatai laser, etc., have developed well.

However, we still need to be soberly aware that China has made great breakthroughs in scale in terms of the production capacity and market share of fiber lasers, but there is still a large gap in the quality of domestic fiber lasers compared with similar foreign products. At the same time, 80% of high-power fiber lasers need to be imported. Universities and scientific research institutes have strong R & D strength. How to seamlessly connect scientific research achievements with enterprise production is a problem worthy of our deep consideration.

Source: Suzhou Ruiwen photoelectric technology

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