High peak power diode-pumped solid-state lasers and industrial applications

Summary form only given. For process speed and throughput, high average power is always required in materials processing with lasers. However, in certain applications, such as the drilling of small-diameter or high-aspect-ratio holes, the brightness of the laser, which is proportional to the power and inversely proportional to the square of the beam quality, becomes equally important for the quality of the processed parts. Beyond the capabilities of conventional rod lasers, face pumped zigzag slab lasers provide the answer to the simultaneous requirements of high average power and good beam quality, and they have demonstrated spectacularly improved capabilities for percussion drilling and noncontact machining of aerospace alloys for over 10 years in free-running (gain-switched) mode with pulses of millisecond duration and several tens of kilowatts peak power.