There are many applications that involve measuring power out of a fiber, where the power is in the …
“You can do Profinet, right?”
John had just ordered 10 laser welding stations for his new car manufacturing facility. As a laser system integrator, you talked to him in detail about all the specs. What exactly does he need from the laser? What sort of control equipment does he have? What else does he need?
John added, almost as an afterthought – “The facility is in Germany, so of course we want all the lasers and devices running on Profinet. You can do that, right?”
Uh-oh.
This post was originally posted in 2012. It is still very popular, so I wanted to share it …
Non-Contact Beam Profiling of 100 kW and Above: How Can This Work?
December 9, 2015 - by OphirBlog
FEATURED
I’ve mentioned BeamWatch before.
It’s an innovative technique for profiling high power lasers (1 kW and up).
I’ve even touched on the underlying Rayleigh scattering effect that makes this possible.
But how does this really work?
With all the advancements in laser technology, lasers have become higher quality and more consistent.
Laser manufacturers test and measure their lasers during development, to make sure you, the laser end user, get the highest quality laser system.
With all this in mind then, do you really have to measure your laser system?
Not everyone knows this, but almost all Ophir power and energy sensors can be used with four standard fiber adapters:
SMA
FC
ST
SC
Of course, any fiber can be measured by an Ophir sensor by taking a free-space measurement – placing the fiber tip a few mm or cm from the sensor and letting the laser beam continue to the sensor.
However, in many cases it is convenient to use a fiber adapter to connect to a measuring device.
If that’s the case, here’s what you’ll want to do.
Laser Measurement Solutions for High Power Industrial Laser Applications
August 26, 2015 - by Mark Slutzki
FEATURED
Modern production facilities must constantly increase throughput, at less cost, with less scrap, and with minimum downtime. In this video overview, you will learn how application of new, advanced technology in measurement devices, can help both designers and users of industrial laser systems to optimize and control their processes, so they can accomplish these goals and achieve consistently good results – both in quality and quantity.
There are a few different ways to measures laser power, but the most common is the photodiode. Photodiodes translate light energy into electricity (current), which can be measured by a current sensor.
Ophir uses a few types of photodiodes in its PD300 series.
Measuring the focal spot of a high power laser is challenging, at best.
The main issue is that when a high power laser is focused down to a small point, the power density can be extremely high, typically high enough to damage any sort of measurement equipment you would use.
The solution?
Lasers are made of matter – of stuff.
And anything made of matter will degrade with time.
So if the laser degradation and eventual failure is inevitable, what can be done?