AKELA Laser
Pioneers in Customizing Laser Diode Products

In the current scenario, high-powered diode lasers have displaced legacy technologies and found increased use for medical, industrial, and military applications and direct material processing such as welding, cutting, and surface treatment. Driven by efficiency, power, reliability, and manufacturability, high—power semiconductor lasers’ requirements have changed and accelerated in recent years. As a result, these projects require custom spectral characteristics, packaging, budgetary, and environmental/thermal considerations. While some industries know precisely what they need from their laser diode, others may choose a partner to navigate what can be a complex development process.

However, many manufacturing companies are geared strictly for volume manufacturing operations and cannot easily accommodate custom projects. In addition, the supplier must have the flexibility and expertise to customize a product in the volumes needed. “Comparing this to automotive industry, imagine a company that assembles cars but depends on other factories to build the engines. Using this analogy, we would be this engine building workshop for laser systems integrators, primarily in medical industry,” begins CEO of AKELA Laser, Mikhail Maiorov. AKELA Laser Corporation is a leading high-power diode laser manufacturer specializing in custom laser assemblies with optics, thermal management, and drive electronics in packages for specific applications or customer systems. The company’s versatile and configurable high-power laser diode products combine various wavelengths primarily focusing on the wavelength range from 400 nm to 2000 nm and output power up to hundreds of watts. “Our flexibility and in-depth experience enables us to design around specific requirements for a customer’s laser diode module, whether it be performance, cost, or size,” adds Maiorov.

AKELA’s unique multi-wavelength fibre-coupled diode laser modules provide up to eight wavelengths from one fibre. At the same time, its single-wavelength laser diode modules combine up to 12 diode lasers into a high-power diode laser module with single or multiple outputs. These diode laser modules cover a variety of medical, industrial, and defence applications. In addition, the company also delivers machine vision laser diode modules with a wide selection of operating wavelengths, high output power, and quality structured light patterns designed to address the needs of R&D and OEM markets specifically.

In many instances, technicians struggle to integrate high-power laser diode lasers into their systems due to the wrong approach of manufacturers who design the laser system first and then try to find a laser diode solution that matches the design. This often leads to additional costs, poor performance, delays caused by issues in thermal management, optics/beam shaping, and drive control electronics. At AKELA, it all starts with the laser diode. The company aims to understand its customer’s specific applications and design a complete solution thermally, optically, electronically using a holistic approach to ensure a successful design that meets their requirements. AKELA’s full-service engineering capability and zeal to work with clients in the initial design phases ensure a successful outcome. The company’s designs provide high power, brightness, and long life (MTBF). AKELA ensures that the final package and cooling approach (either passive or water-cooled) handles the thermal loads generated by a customers’ operating conditions and environments.

AKELA designs the optimal opto-mechanical packaging solutions to meet size, cost, thermal and environmental requirements, such as submarine, airborne, space, and high g-force operating conditions. The company models optics to determine a range of solutions that result in the desired spot size, beam shape, collimation, or fiber coupling.

Established in 2003, AKELA started by supporting manufacturing laser modules for a large medical laser device company. “Over the years, we started volume manufacturing multi wavelength lasers, and focused on standard designs of the modules. But depending on the requirements of particular customers, we built a system which offered them unprecedented flexibility in their system,” explains Maiorov. By 2011, the company pioneered its multi-wavelength laser diode modules and introduced it to the market. Since then, AKELA has produced various modules where individual laser diodes are combined and delivered via a common fiber. These lasers are increasingly found in medical devices, entertainment, and fluorescence spectroscopy. Today, the company is focusing on growing its multi-wavelength laser modules and targeting niche customers with its customized systems. AKELA is currently seeking to partner with well-positioned medical device manufacturers companies to support its endeavours in providing a multi-wavelength approach to fat reduction.