Gooch & Housego today announced a major development in Q-Switch Technology – The Stallion - created using an innovative manufacturing technique that enables optimum performance without the need for specialised treatment of cooling water. The first product based on the Stallion technology is for use in high power pulsed laser systems and is on display at the Gooch & Housego booth (#1013), Photonics West.

The patent-pending Stallion manufacturing technique, developed at Gooch & Housego’s Ilminster site, is the result of many years of research to advance Q-Switch technology. Gooch & Housego has successfully combined the corrosion resistant properties of stainless steel with the superior power handling of aluminium, to bring the new, Stallion version of the leading industry standard Q-Switch, which can be cooled with ordinary water and still deliver optimum performance.

“We are very proud of our reputation within the Q-Switch market, and with this new development we believe we have made a truly significant breakthrough,” said Gooch & Housego Acousto-Optics product manager, Rob Swain. “Changes in the way that laser cooling has been implemented over recent years have created the requirement for a device with corrosion resistance. The Stallion technique enables us to deliver a Q-Switch that can extend the lifetime of products, reduce production downtime and cut engineer costs, whilst never compromising performance.

“We’ve created a cost-effective manufacturing technique that enables us to build a corrosion resistant Q-Switch and sell it at the same price point as previous models,” concluded Swain.

Gooch & Housego is the world’s leading manufacturer of acousto-optic Q-Switches. It was one of the first companies to develop compact Q-Switches for the first generation of diode-pumped lasers and has produced a wide range of devices optimised for specific customer applications, most recently including fibre-coupled Q-Switches for fibre lasers.