Reflected laser radiation - relevance for laser safety?

Abstract

Safety is compulsory in today’s production lines. Those lines often use laser material processing applications. The highest risk for the operator or a bystander of a laser application is the exposure to the direct beam. With the present laser beam intensities, an accident at least causes sudden blindness or severe burns. Even if the process works correctly, which means the beam is always oriented towards the workpiece, the scattered and reflected parts of the laser beam still can be powerful enough to cause serious harm. The state-of-the-art safety measures are passive laser safety cabins around the application. Because of the high intensities and the low beam divergence of the highly brilliant laser beam sources, they cannot guarantee a safe use of these laser applications. An option is to use active laser safety barriers that react to an impinging laser beam on its surface.A new approach to guarantee laser safety is to monitor the system and watch for incidents, to ensure that the laser spot never reaches the safety barrier. Assuming that accidents with the direct laser beam cannot occur, the passive safety measures still have to withstand the reflected laser radiation.In this paper a theoretical model is presented with which the energy distribution in a hemisphere above a deep-welding-process can be calculated. The model was calibrated and validated with intensity measurements during a welding process. The results of the measurement can be used to develop a process-tailored safety cabin. Because of the increased mobility such a system increases the flexibility of the production cell. Furthermore, the costs for laser-safety may be decreased significantly.