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    • Rob Martinsen

    CTO, nLIGHT

    Rob Martinsen is chief technology officer (CTO) at nLIGHT (Camas, WA).

    FIGURE 1. An AFX laser incorporates all-fiber beam shaping, which allows rapid switching of the output beam size and shape. The beam profile can be tuned between true single-mode and a ring, plus a variety of shapes in between. When interacting with the workpiece, ring- and saddle-shaped beams create significantly less soot and spatter.
    Laser Processing

    Ring beams change the game for powder-bed fusion

    Rob Martinsen
    Aug. 25, 2022
    Fiber beam shaping plays a key role on the path to laser powder-bed fusion for additive manufacturing of metals.
    FIGURE 1. Chirally coupled core (3C) optical fiber mode propagation (a), a 33 μm core-diameter fiber image (b), simulated modal loss vs. wavelength for the two lowest fiber modes (c), and mode beat analysis for well-aligned and offset 33 μm fibers are shown. A spectral beating analysis that looks at the magnitude of fiber mode beating as a function of misalignment of a launched signal shows effectively no beat, indicating high-purity single-mode operation.
    Fiber Optics

    Fiber Lasers: 3C optical fibers improve large-mode-area MOPA designs

    Rob Martinsen
    March 11, 2014
    Chirally coupled core (3C) optical fibers allow large-mode areas, near-diffraction-limited beam quality, and effectively zero modal pointing, owing to designed-in higher-order...
    1303lfw3 Frontis
    Lasers & Sources

    SOLID-STATE LASERS: VBG upper-state pumping benefits DPSS lasers

    Michael Atchley
    March 1, 2013
    Properly optimized volume Bragg grating (VBG)-based upper-state laser diode pumping leads to performance and power improvements for diode-pumped solid-state (DPSS) lasers.