Green and Blue Laser Welding
Laser welding, cutting, or cladding has become increasingly popular and, in most cases, has been performed at the NIR wavelength region. However, NIR lasers are less efficient for copper processing due to high reflectivity and therefore low energy absorption. Copper absorbs just 5% of the laser energy at 1070nm, but up to 40 % at…
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Not Too Hot, Not Too Cold: Sensor Fusion Analysis in Additive Manufacturing Laser Processing
Sensor fusion is a concept that merges – or fuses – data from various sensors to create a more complete understanding of a laser’s performance. It’s particularly important in additive manufacturing using laser powder bed fusion, a 3D printing process that makes metal parts. Metal powder is subjected to powerful laser beams, creating solid layers…
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Meet BeamWatch® Plus, Industry’s First Non-Contact Beam Profiler for High Power VIS and NIR Lasers
In case you’ve missed it, MKS Instruments, Inc has announced Ophir® BeamWatch® Plus, a non-contact beam profiling system for measuring focus shift, focus spot size, and position of high power industrial lasers operating in the VIS and NIR range. Introduced at LASER World of Photonics, BeamWatch Plus is a second-generation system that now measures high power…
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Laser Cutting and Welding with High Quality
Ophir Spiricon developed BeamWatch, which is a solution that uses the properties of Rayleigh scattering to monitor the beam profile along its caustic (including focal point) in order to view focal size and shift, in real video frame rates.
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Ophir’s 2023 Laser Measurement Catalog is Here!
The new updated edition of our laser measurement catalog is ready!As in every year – it sets out the comprehensive range of laser power and energy sensors, meters and laser beam profiling systems for medical, industrial, defense, research applications and more. It is an easy and agile round-up with short descriptions and up-to-date technical specifications.…
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Even With Volkswagen AG: Ophir’s BeamWatch System Optimizes Laser Process Development
The laser seam welding of sheets of zinc-coated steel – a combination of metals with disparate melting and evaporation properties – used to be a major challenge for the automotive industry. But Volkswagen AG is pursuing a promising approach with multi-focal laser welding: A newly developed process enables significantly higher welding speeds than is otherwise…
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Exact Cuts With a Laser: Recognizing and Compensating for Thermal Focus Shift
Read all about how Messer Cutting Systems uses Ophir BeamWatch for non-contact measurement of the laser beam! Precise cuts, sophisticated component geometries, limited material melt – the advantages of laser cutting are numerous. And due to the steady increases in laser power, these advantages can now benefit a range of new applications: fusion cutting is…
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Why and How to Profile Challenging Laser Applications
We introduce three techniques for monitoring the critical characteristics of the beam as the laser is used in three very different applications: (a) VSCEL / Laser Diode Mode and beam divergence, (b) Additive Manufacturing lasers used is 3D SLM / SLS, and (c) Fiber welding / heat treating / cleaning lasers. We will discuss three…
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Ophir’s 2022 Laser Measurement Catalog is Here!
As every year – Ophir’s new 2022 catalog for laser measurement covers a wide range of laser power and energy sensors, meters and laser beam profiling systems for medical, industrial, defense, and research applications. The first section of the catalog is devoted to laser power meters, which consist of sensors (detectors) and meters (displays). Ophir online tools…
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Maintain Proper Laser Beam Parameters for Additive Manufacturing
Additive manufacturing (AM), including selective laser melting (SLM) and 3D printing, relies on its laser source to properly manufacture 3D-printed parts. The laser is at once the most essential element of the system, and the most vulnerable to degradation. Here are some of the malfunctions that can occur with an unmonitored laser system: Optical pass…
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Ensure Quality Laser Welds for High Pressure Vessels
High pressure vessels (over 100 PSI) have high quality standards for their structural integrity, for obvious reasons. Weld points can often pose a critical failure, so these especially must be tested to withstand the high pressure of gas that the container will be used for. Remote laser welding stations typically use multimode, multi-kilowatt fiber lasers…
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Watch: Focal Shift
Is your laser’s focal spot where you think it is? The following video shows the focal shift of a 100Kw laser during the first four seconds of startup using BeamWatch, Ophir’s non-contact high power beam analyzer. Contact us
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