NANJING, July 24 (Xinhua) — Putting on security goggles, a customer on the exhibition corridor of Suzhou Maxphotonics Technology Co., Ltd. grips a welding gun weighing simply 300 grams, lighter than a bottle of water, and in beneath a minute, a seamless, hairline-thin weld takes form throughout a steel plate.
This isn’t any sci-fi film set, however a frequent scene at this firm in east China’s Jiangsu Province.
The “Hongtong K1M” welding gun, launched simply this June, options an industry-first built-in wire-feeding mechanism constructed instantly into the gun physique, eliminating the necessity for welders to continually flip round and attain for welding wire like dancers in a tango.
The gun’s 360-degree rotating hover button takes ergonomics to the subsequent stage: whether or not bending, leaning sideways or welding overhead, fingers discover the button from any angle, really placing the welder answerable for the machine.
“Ordinary people can master the basics with simple training. New operators can reach the skill level of veteran welders after a short course,” mentioned Dang Jiantang, deputy basic supervisor of Maxphotonics, with evident satisfaction.
In Dang’s view, laser welding is carrying out one thing revolutionary, reworking welding from a standard craft requiring “apprenticeship under a master for three years” into an accessible, democratized instrument.
Dang joined Maxphotonics in 2013 and has watched the corporate develop from round 40 to 50 workers at first to its present workforce of over 1,900.
“When we first settled here, revenue was just 2 to 3 million yuan (about 294,525 to 441,787 U.S. dollars). Last year we hit 1.5 billion yuan, and this year we’re on track to reach 1.65 billion,” he revealed.
These numbers translate into actual {industry} management: Maxphotonics now ranks second globally and first domestically within the fiber laser market, with merchandise exported to over 60 international locations and areas.
As Yang Jinlong, R&D director at Maxphotonics, put it: “China accounts for 56 percent of the global laser market, and Maxphotonics alone holds a 27.5-percent share of the domestic market.”
This “hidden champion” boasts a powerful patent portfolio, that includes over 1,000 patent purposes and greater than 600 granted patents, masking your complete industrial chain from optical fibers and pump sources to high-power management know-how, attaining full autonomy throughout the board. Its most celebrated breakthrough is the world’s first 160kW ultra-high-power fiber laser, which slices via thick metal plates with ease and has set a brand new {industry} benchmark.
Intriguingly, Maxphotonics’ ambitions lengthen far past merely “exporting products.” Dang defined that the corporate has established its European headquarters in Gilching in Bavaria, Germany, and its U.S. headquarters in Boston. Wholly-owned subsidiaries function in Italy, Trkiye, Australia, Japan and the Republic of Korea, with department places of work in India, Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and Thailand.
This is way over gear gross sales. Rather, it quantities to the weaving of a worldwide laser service community. Local gross sales, native after-sales assist and native coaching mix to compress the service radius of “Made in China” proper to clients’ doorsteps.
A half-hour drive from Maxphotonics lies the Suzhou High-Tech Zone and the headquarters of Suzhou Everbright Photonics Co., Ltd., the place the high-power semiconductor laser chips that function the beating “heart” of Maxphotonics’ lasers are manufactured.
If Maxphotonics’ gentle is “visible sharpness,” Everbright’s gentle is hidden inside chips measured in millimeters. A chip smaller than a fingernail should go via epitaxy, lithography, coating, packaging and testing, with every step tolerating not even the slightest deviation.
“When the project started, overseas manufacturers kept core beam-combining algorithms and coating processes strictly confidential. We had to build our experimental platform from scratch,” recalled Wang Jun, R&D director at Everbright, reflecting on these grueling days in pursuit of technical breakthroughs.
In May this yr, Everbright’s “kilowatt-class blue-band active-control spectral beam combining technology” received China’s Top 10 Optical Industry Technology Breakthrough Award, breaking Western corporations’ unique monopoly in blue high-power processing. Chinese options at the moment are out there for high-end purposes equivalent to new vitality car battery welding and highly-reflective steel 3D printing.
Today, Everbright is a far cry from its early startup days. It operates China’s solely 6-inch gallium arsenide laser chip manufacturing line, ranks first in home market share for high-power semiconductor laser chips, and noticed income attain 477 million yuan in 2025, surging 75.09 % yr on yr.
Notably, probably the most outstanding side is not the energy of any single firm, however how Suzhou has packed a whole photonics {industry} chain into single buildings. At No. 56 Lijiang Road, the place Everbright relies, 12 upstream and downstream enterprises occupy one constructing.
Across the Suzhou High-Tech Zone alone, over 350 industry-related enterprises have clustered, together with eight listed corporations and 35 specialised “little giant” enterprises, with complete output worth exceeding 85 billion yuan. Three dominant industrial chains, specifically lasers, optical communications and clever optical sensing, are advancing in tandem.