[en] Collinear laser spectroscopy has been used for many years to investigate atomic and nuclear properties with high precision all over the nuclear chart. It will be increasingly used at in-flight facilities like FRIB and FAIR to study short-lived isotopes of refractory metals and transition metals that have not been investigated so far due to the limited availability at ISOL facilities. In this work a versatile and compact ion source has been developed that is able to produce ions from a wide range of elements and in particular from the transition metals. It will serve for preparatory work on such ion beams and as a source for reference measurements of stable isotopes during on-line campaigns. Ions are produced by laser ablation inside a buffer gas cell and then extracted through a compact RF-only funnel and an RF+DC buncher into high-vacuum conditions. The new ion source was tested and benchmarked at the Collinear Apparatus for Laser Spectroscopy and Applied Science (COALA) at TU Darmstadt. Its functionality has been demonstrated for calcium, titanium, iron, and copper ions, for which beams with sufficient intensity are produced. Typical average ion currents between 3 and 20 pA at the optical detection region were established at 100 Hz ablation rate. However, unexpectedly large amounts of material ejection onto the funnel electrodes limited the operation time for some materials (Ca, Fe) to a few hours, while for others (Cu, Ti) the source operated for several days. Laser spectroscopy in the D1 transition of Ca${}^{+}$ ions was used to benchmark the ion source and, a linewidth of about 60MHz with an insignificant drift of the center frequency within the ion bunch duration was demonstrated, competitive with surface ion sources and outperforming other laser ablation sources. As a first application of the ion source, collinear laser spectroscopy was performed on three J → J + 1 transitions of the 3d${}^2$(${}^3$F)4s ${}^4$F${}_J$ → 3d${}^2$(${}^3$F)4p ${}^4$G${}_{J\text{′<!-- ??? -->}}$ fine-structure multiplett in Ti${}^{+}$ ions for all five stable isotopes. Isotope shifts were extracted with precision between 1 and 2MHz. Those are required to model lineshapes in astronomical investigations of absorption lines in quasar spectra to search for variations of the fine-structure constant in early times of our universe. Measurements of the hyperfine structure of the stable odd-isotopes proved that the J = 3/2 → J′ = 5/2 transition is the best choice for on-line collinear laser spectroscopy measurements planned at FRIB, since all hyperfine lines are separated. Finally, the mass-shift factor and the field shift factor were extracted, which are crucial for the extraction of nuclear charge radii from online measurements of short lived nuclei.