Addressing Burning Laser Systems Questions
Félicien Legrand, Sales Manager at Gentec-EO, speaks with our team on day two of SPIE Photonics West 2024:
When designing, using or integrating laser systems our customers usually have 2 main questions to answers.:
- How do I get the most accurate, safe measurements of laser beam power, pulse energies or beam profile?
- Do I integrate smart controls to have my detectors work for me?
Accuracy is the combination of 2 things: measurement repeatability (how close 2 consecutive readings are in the same conditions) and calibration uncertainty (how close my readings are to the true definition of the Watt or the Joule). Having live performance diagnostics in laser systems is key to many fields of applications such as in additive manufacturing, third party software integration for laser beam performance traceability in medical devices manufacturing machines, automated alignment of optical components in production lines, setting up alarms in laser burn-in stations for example, or anticipating optical components degradation over time, etc. I think machine learning and pattern recognition have a bright future here.
Whether you use LabVIEW, .NET, Python, serial communication, Ethernet, wireless, this is where versatile detectors, both in how they handle the laser energy, and how they can be controlled, are important for integrating live performance diagnostics in your laser systems for dynamic process correction.
-Fel