Product Code: ICA12_610

With Fieldbus Interfaces and Robust Design Laser Beam Monitoring Meets the Requirements of Applications in Production
Authors:
Otto Märten, PRIMES GmbH; -
Stefan Wolf, PRIMES GmbH; Pfungstadt
Harald Schwede, PRIMES GmbH; Pfungstadt
Volker Brandl, PRIMES GmbH; Pfungstadt Germany
Reinhard Kramer, PRIMES GmbH; Pfungstadt Germany
Presented at ICALEO 2012

With laser material processing, the properties of laser beams are important parameters for achieving and maintaining high processing quality. Laser power pulse energy, but also beam distribution and size at the work piece as well as the beam propagation parameters, are strongly correlated to the process performance and quality. In recent years, laser beam diagnostics in the processing zone at real process parameter has become more and more accepted and applied regularly at laser machine testing or qualification, at process development or implementation, and also for maintenance or trouble shooting. The application of beam diagnostics during production was hindered so far by the huge effort which was required for the integration of the beam diagnostics into a production system. Because of the increasing demands for automated machine integrated beam diagnostics from automotive and aerospace applications, we have developed a new generation of beam diagnostic devices. In addition to the measurement functionalities for power measurement, beam distribution scanning or beam propagation analysis the autonomous data processing capabilities of the devices and the interfacing to the machine controllers gain importance. We have integrated field bus interfaces for ProfiBus or ProfiNet to the diagnostic devices in combination with integrated data processing for power and focus distribution measurement. In the presentation, we will focus on the improvements for automated monitoring of beam properties, the reduction of efforts for machine integration and the benefits gained at manifold installations of such devices into high power macro applications or low power micromachining applications during the last year.