Measuring Multi-kW Welding Lasers On-Line

Over the past few decades, high power lasers have become ubiquitous in the automotive industry. Nowadays, they are used to process numerous vehicle parts. Laser welding is one of the techniques that have been considerably developed and improved over time. Because of their flexibility and ease to be integrated into automated systems, it is more and more common to see laser welding systems operating directly into automobile assembly lines.

What does this look like? A beam from a diode-pumped solid-state laser (DPSSL) is delivered by a fiber optic cable mounted directly onto an automated robot arm.

Despite the high quality and reliability of such laser sources, they can fail unpredictably if a problem occurs in the laser delivery head. Since no production manager wants to see an entire batch of bodyworks being scrapped by bad welds, it has become part of quality control to periodically measure the power of welding lasers to make sure it is within specifications and to make sure nothing is failing catastrophically.