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Fiber coupled laser

Ablaze

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I am looking at a fiber coupled laser module and I'm having a really hard time finding detailed information that I can understand on just what a fiber coupled laser is.

The impression I am getting is that the diode is on one side of a fiber optic cable and the optics are on the other side. I am confused about how flexible the fiber cable is, and if it is easily damaged or kinked.

Also, when I asked my Chinese contact about it he asked me if I wanted to use the fiber for input or output. The question has completely stumped me, and I haven't the faintest idea what it would mean.

Can someone please enlighten me?
 
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Where is this fiber coupled laser being sold?
It wouldn't happen to be ebay, would it?
 

Ablaze

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No, I have a Chinese supplier who makes modules to order for me if I order large enough orders. They mentioned on their website that they can make fiber coupled modules. I have never dealt with a fiber coupled module, but a flexible laser head may be just what I need...

Ohh.. one more open question: Would it be possible to have one module output to 5 fiber coupled laser heads... or does some aspect of the technology make that infeasible?
 
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I don't know much about the subject, but I believe Qumefox was messing with a 473nm fiber coupled unit a while back.
Send him a PM and maybe he can help you out.
After all, he's spectrometering your diode, so I'm sure you could at least bring it up to him. :beer:
 
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Ablaze

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Well what ever they are they don't seem to be particularly popular, and I wonder why.

Perhaps just the cost?

Thank you for the advice rocket.
 
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All a fiber-coupled laser is, is a laser where a length of fiber optic cabling is attached to the aperture. Nothing more nothing less. And yes, there is generally a maximum 'bend radius' for fiber cabling but it depends on the composition - it's usually pretty flexible.

Sometimes fiber-couped lasers won't be collimated in any useful fashion going into the fiber, any collimation occurs at the end of the fiber run. (Or not at all.) But there's not much mystery to it, that's really all they are.
 
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Pretty much what Aryntha said. It's just a laser with a piece of fiber on the front of it. Usually they have little in the way of optics between the gain medium and the fiber.

All the 473nm heads I have were originally fiber coupled. Only one still is though, but I only bought it so i'd have 'the whole set' since it's out of the same piece of equipment the guts to the spectrometer I have was originally out of. The florescence metering head on it is an optics marvel though. heh. Very little of the 473nm source (less than 1% or so) gets reflected back towards the spectrometer even though the beam travels through the same optical path.

I actually wonder if the other heads that were sold were rejects or something.. SInce the fiber coupled one is the only one of these I own that actually has a pure gaussian output.. (before the fiber) all the others have blobs or other defects in the outputs to various extents.
 
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Ablaze

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From what I have been reading the process of going through the fiber corrects the dot profile, so I'm guessing they simply didn't care about occlusions in the dot profile.

What I don't understand is what part of the laser goes on what side? Does the diode go in the back with the head being just a set of focusing lenses? If this is how it works, then why can't you just take led light and send it though a fiber to make coherent light?

Does the output come out exactly like a regular laser would? Doesn't the phase of the light vary when you move the fiber?
 
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Light being coherent has absolutely nothing to do with the shape of it's sources output. Coherent simply means it's all the same frequency. LED's are broad spectrum devices. Meaning their output, even though they're classified by center wavelength, actually covers a large chunk of the spectrum(relatively speaking)

There are lots of reasons to fiber couple a laser. It just really depends on application. With fiber, there really doesn't have to be a 'head'. Not all lasers are intended to be shone around rooms and make pretty low divergence beams.. And yes it can be used to improve beam specs.. but it's pretty much the same result as other beam correction methods. You lose a good bit of power doing it.
 
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There's a good video on Youtube by frothychimp showing a 10W 532 System he has, he attatched a Fibre Optic cable to it, with a resulting power I think.. of 9.7 Watts..

He also collimated it after the cable output.

10W 532nm DPSS Demonstration - YouTube


Well Jealous also, those systems cost 10,000 upwards!!!
 
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Well your going to have fewer losses fiber coupling a gaussian DPSS laser than you are a multimode diode.
 

Ablaze

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Thank you for the link Misanthrop. I am still trying to understand a fiber coupled laser. To me it seems like fiber should scatter laser light, and I can't figure out why it doesn't.
 




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