In recent years the interest in laser welding and laser additive manufacturing has risen, often using high power lasers with 100 W to multi-kW power range. While theoretically higher laser power enables increased process speed, in practice there are often process physics limits to the improvement. For additive manufacturing, this limit is the need to maintain … Continue reading
Diffractive optical elements (DOEs) are widely used in infrared systems, especially where industrial processes are involved. This article focuses on laser welding applications and showcases unique custom solutions that provide competitive advantage to the systems using them. Infrared laser trends Infrared lasers, especially in the 1um wavelength region, are the workhorses of the laser material … Continue reading
Background: What is a multispot beam splitter? How does one generate a split laser beam? A split laser beam is the result of using a diffractive beam splitter with an incoming laser beam. This creates an array of split beams, each sharing the same intensity profile and other characteristics of the input beam (wavelength, polarization), but with … Continue reading
Holo/Or presents a new video about beam shaping solutions for laser welding applications. This video, entitled “Advancements in Diffractive Optical Elements: Fixed and Variable Solutions for Laser Welding,” is presented by Natan Kaplan, Holo/Or’s CTO. The Agenda for this presentation is: Holo/Or overview Diffractive optics in general Product spotlight – Fixed laser welding beam shaping … Continue reading
Introduction to laser cutting and welding Laser cutting is generally a fairly simple and straight-forward process. Using a high-power laser beam focused into a tight spot and aimed at the work surface, the laser energy is absorbed in the workpiece and then converted into heat. This heat in turn can cause vaporization or ablation of … Continue reading
Laser beam shaping applications Many different systems and processes benefit from the ability to modify the laser beam irradiance characteristics at the work plane. Some of these applications include industrial processes such as laser cutting, laser welding or laser micro-machining, metrology, microscopy, medical devices, military, academic research and experiments, and many more. Beam shaping may … Continue reading