A beam guiding system combining several lasers with various working stations

Abstract

Design and construction of a laser beam guiding system for industrial use will be presented, which is capable to link different laser beam sources to a number of working stations (4 lasers to 8 working stations up to now) simultaneously. The intention to use such a particular system is to increase the rate of system usage of every connected laser. This leads to a reduction of the number of lasers and to an increase in flexibility and redundancy of the whole system.To achieve nearly constant beam parameters over large distances, specially designed beam expanders are used. Therefore, the beam diameter of all lasers (laser power from 1,500 W up to 5,000 W) is in the range of 30 mm up to 40 mm within the whole beam guiding system with beam paths ranging from 5 meters up to 30 meters. All optical elements used are either copper mirrors with an absorption of between 0.5% and 1% or enhanced coated mirrors with an absorption range from 0.1% to 0.2%. To conserve the surface quality, the beam guiding system is filled with dry and filtered nitrogen.Requesting any laser is not only possible from the particular working station but also from a central control station. The actual fixing of the beam path required by positioning beam deflectors and the supervision of safety of every action within the system are numerically controlled.Design and construction of a laser beam guiding system for industrial use will be presented, which is capable to link different laser beam sources to a number of working stations (4 lasers to 8 working stations up to now) simultaneously. The intention to use such a particular system is to increase the rate of system usage of every connected laser. This leads to a reduction of the number of lasers and to an increase in flexibility and redundancy of the whole system.To achieve nearly constant beam parameters over large distances, specially designed beam expanders are used. Therefore, the beam diameter of all lasers (laser power from 1,500 W up to 5,000 W) is in the range of 30 mm up to 40 mm within the whole beam guiding system with beam paths ranging from 5 meters up to 30 meters. All optical elements used are either copper mirrors with an absorption of between 0.5% and 1% or enhanced coated mirrors with an absorption range from 0.1% to 0.2%. To conserve the surface quality, the beam guiding system is fill...