discuss the advantages of this large pedestal fibre in the context of overcoming limitations
imposed by cleaving and splicing tolerances. Finally we demonstrate the use of such a fibre
in constructing monolithic fibre lasers operating at 1.95 µm with 170 W of output power, 0.1
nm line-width and a diffraction limited beam quality of M^ 2 _X, Y= 1.02, 1.03.