The video in this blog post presents a webinar, brought to you by Russ Leikis, software engineer, product support at Ophir. The webinar introduces the suite of laser measurements available in Ophir’s BeamGage and engaging several laser measurements issues
In this video, Dick Rieley (Mid-Atlantic Sales Manager) recounts how a customer was able to increase his throughput by 4x!
An integrating sphere is a powerful tool to capture all the light of a widely divergent beam. The sphere scatters light uniformly over its whole interior.
This post was originally posted in 2012. It is still very popular, so I wanted to share it …
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?
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?
2018 Ophir Photonics