The Way to Check the Beam

Checking laser beam performance is nothing new. Even those that have engaged in the practice may have been using less-than-reliable technologies to do the job, however.

Take, for example, the use of burn paper, which was commonly used when CO2 laser systems were the dominant laser cutting technology in job shops. In this scenario, an industrial laser operator would place burn paper in the cutting chamber to align optics or cutting nozzles. When the laser was turned on, the operator could see if the paper was burned.

Some fabricators moved on to use acrylic plastic to make a 3D representation of a profile. But burning acrylic produces carcinogenic fumes, which is something that shop floor employees should probably avoid.

“Power pucks,” analog devices with mechanical displays, eventually emerged as the first power meters to provide a more accurate reflection of how the laser beam was performing. (The power puck is placed under the beam, where it absorbs the light and measures the temperature to calculate the laser beam’s power.) These pucks can be influenced by ambient temperatures, so they may not truly provide the most precise reading when testing for laser performance.

The reality that fabricators aren’t doing a good job of keeping tabs on their laser cutting machines and, if they are, they probably aren’t using the best tool has led Ophir Photonics to introduce a small, self-contained laser power meter for measuring industrial lasers. The Ariel device measures laser power from 200 mW to 8 kW.