At its core, calibration is about ensuring that your equipment is working properly and in the way it is intended. Returning your equipment for periodic calibration allows for several things to take place including evaluation of your equipment for damage, opportunities for us to provide education, and upgrades to your firmware, as well as the sensor-to-sensor comparison to our NIST-traceable masters.
When we receive your equipment our technicians first conduct an evaluation. This...
MKS Instruments recognized early on that measuring the laser beam in laser-based AM processes would become the key to efficient production. Four years ago, the company introduced the first measuring device that could assess – without any contact – the caustics of the laser beam on the building plane. This was followed by the launch of Ophir Ariel, an innovative power meter for AM applications. Then at Laser World of Photonics 2022 in Munich, the manufacturer introduced Ophir BeamPeek ™, an integrated measuring system...
This article explains why choosing the right heat control method is one of the most important considerations when choosing a suitable laser power measurement sensor for your needs. It will review the different cooling technologies used in high-power laser measurement sensors. It will also examine the changing requirements of the cooling system as the power levels of the laser increase, and consider how these are met by fan and water cooling methods. In addition, this article will compare the different cooling requirements of a pulsed laser...
Die Entwicklung laserbasierender Anwendungen hängt wesentlich mit der Verfügbarkeit geeigneter und genauer Messtechnik zusammen. Häufig werden technische Innovationen erst durch neue, präzisere Messverfahren ermöglicht. Umgekehrt steigen die Anforderungen an die Messtechnik mit neuen Prozessen. Der Artikel gibt einen Überblick über historische Ursprünge und aktuelle Entwicklungen der Laserstrahlanalyse.
Leistungsmessgeräte und Profilmessgeräte
Die meisten Laseranwender sind...
Laser-based additive manufacturing is transforming industrial processes and opening up new horizons in a variety of application areas. In the aerospace and automotive industries, for example, it makes it efficient to manufacture intricate parts according to lightweight construction principles; in medical technology, it has expanded the range of prostheses and orthoses; and in toolmaking, it shortens the time it takes to implement new requirements. Long since AM applications have attained a level of maturity that allows for series production...
Introduction
Displays are all around us, from large TV screens to tiny displays inside AR/VR gear just in front of our eyes. Display technology has come a long way from the days of the bulky cathode ray tubes to transparent and flexible OLED displays utilizing light emitting organic molecules!
As new technologies take their place on stage, equipment suppliers follow carefully for trends and opportunities and the laser industry is no exception. In recent years, OLED...
We introduce three techniques for monitoring the critical characteristics of the beam as the laser is used in three very different applications: (a) VSCEL / Laser Diode Mode and beam divergence, (b) Additive Manufacturing lasers used is 3D SLM / SLS, and (c) Fiber welding / heat treating / cleaning lasers.
This article will introduce three techniques that monitor the critical characteristics of the beam as the laser is used in three very different applications.
...The laser industry has revolutionized many domains of modern life in the past half century. At first, it opened new ways to perform basic research by enabling a variety of scientific techniques that improved our understanding of the universe – from probing the atomic structure of molecules to measuring the distance to the moon. Later, it had changed the telecommunication industry by allowing vast transmission of data at the speed of light, promoting the internet revolution. In between, it also modified and significantly improved...
A new measurement procedure allows for the fast and contact-free measurement of the focused laser beam. At the same time, modern measuring devices have Profinet interfaces and allow the processes to be documented. These are enormous advantages, especially in times of just-in-time production
Automated laser welding is a big topic in modern production and more and more new applications are being developed. Be it pairing materials that were previously considered to be non-weldable, complex...
Introduction
Measuring the performance of your laser is vital to...
Optimizing quality processes with the Ophir Near Field Analyzer
Introduction
VCSELs are used in diverse commercial, industrial and consumer device applications. The latest developments of the technology have paved the way to state-of-the-art 3D sensing applications. Combining different testing techniques for optical quality control and characterization – such as VCSEL optical power and energy output measurement, as well as far- and near-field beam analysis...
Introduction
The development of remote material processing techniques requires increasing the accuracy of the process to permit creating smaller features. Laser systems, used for various industrial applications like material processing and micromachining, require small focal spots and at the same time, greater focal lengths. To achieve that, lasers systems combining larger beams, and lower M2, combined with longer focal length lenses are used. This results in smaller focal spots at longer distances from the laser and Rayleigh...
More than 400 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes. For them, the ability to measure blood glucose levels non-invasively (without piercing the skin) would be an enormous relief. Thanks to a patented development by DiaMonTech AG, this dream could soon come true for many people. The technology, which uses an infrared quantum cascade laser, is already available as a desktop device. But a smartphonesized instrument is soon to follow. In order to achieve this miniaturization without loss of quality, it is necessary to detect even minute...
Over the past several years, the fields of aesthetic medicine, surgery and cosmetics have been revolutionized by laser technology. With the development of their innovative laser systems, Asclepion Laser Technologies contributes greatly to patient well-being and faster healing. A consistent measurement strategy, effective testing processes and first-class measuring devices guarantee the high quality of the company's manufacturing at all times. For decades, Asclepion has relied on Ophir measuring technology from MKS Instruments to check...
Why does an individual calibration pay off?
Measurement devices for lasers are used in many different applications and industries, which means a vast amount of calibration regulations. While regular calibrations are mandatory in the medical sector, they tend to be neglected in other industries. It's important to understand that calibration not only ensures the quality of the measurement in terms of repeatability; the individual calibration of a measurement device can also increase its absolute measurement accuracy. Let us...
The laser is a very powerful and universal tool. It has found its way into many processes across all industries, including medical applications where the number of use cases continues to grow. Reliability and safety demands are placing high levels of responsibility on manufacturers of laser systems. To ensure the high quality of each laser system, thorough end-of-line testing is mandatory before a laser system is delivered. Nevertheless, as with many industries today, competition is high and manufacturers are seeking to more cost-effectively...
Know Your Laser Beam – Achieve Reproducibility
Laser-based additive manufacturing has transformed many industrial processes. But still, one of the most challenging tasks associated with the technology is to ensure reproducibility from one layer to another, between multiple laser sources within the same machine, and from one machine to the next.
The good news is that MKS Instruments has developed a variety of devices especially for additive manufacturing,...
As the development of new UV LED sources continues at an ever-growing pace, so do the industrial applications that utilize them. UV LEDs are being put to work in various industrial processes, medical applications, and – especially due to COVID-19 – increasingly used to develop solutions for disinfection purposes. Efficient utilization of the UV radiation requires good measurement tools. However, accurate light measurement in this spectral range presents challenges, such as how to accurately measure the irradiance if the...
The Concept:
Ophir customers often need to connect different optical components together to create an optimal setup to best meet their needs. In order to do this, Ophir provides mutual interconnections between different Ophir products via adapters with various threads, designed to exactly fit required optical path distances for each device. This is an integrated solution, prealigned and ready to use.
Our line of Beam Profiler cameras and sensors of various formats can be...
Thermal sensors can be used over many years without any repair if they are used in a correct laser optical setup. However, this is exactly where the challenge begins. Experienced service technicians from Ophir's calibration laboratories around the globe repeatedly see sensors where incorrect usage had lead to early wear. The experts have briefly summarized the four most common causes that significantly influence the measurement accuracy of thermal sensors, as well as corresponding preventive measures.
...Since Columbia University graduate student Gordon Gould and Bell Laboratories scientists Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow (among others) coined the term LASER in the 1950's, applications of the laser have seemed limitless. Working with these new discoveries had to be exciting, but applying hundreds of kilowatts of laser power, like the ones being used in directed energy laser systems, wasn't even something that could be fathomed at the time.
The application of massive amounts...
VCSELs, LEDs, edge emitting, and fiber lasers are used in many sensitive applications within fast-growing markets. To guarantee the high quality of the devices, it is essential to analyze the beam profile, but those wide, divergent beams place specific requirements on the measurement system. On the one hand, the apertures of conventional beam profilers are too small to collect the entire spot of large or divergent light sources. On the other hand, diverging beams cannot be accurately measured with regular detectors because the quantum...
The Ophir® BeamSquared system measures the propagation characteristics of CW and pulsed laser completely automated. It’s compact design and its flexibility in terms of wavelength – it is suited for measuring UV to NIR to Telecom wavelength – makes it a powerful measurement tool in many laser applications. As with every highly precise laser measurement device its biggest enemy is Optics contamination due to dust and debris. Also, to ensure optimal measurement conditions an accurate offset correction is essential. Here...
Pulsed lasers are as popular as continuous wave (CW) lasers. The physics of many lasers lends itself to pulsed operation, and just as important, so do many applications. Pulse widths are becoming very short, reaching femto-seconds. When concentrating the laser energy into such short pulses and onto a small spot, even low pulse energy - in the μJ range - is sufficient to melt, cut, ablate, and weld materials without the effect of slowly heating and damaging adjacent areas. While pulsed lasers exist in many wavelengths from UV to IR, UV lasers...