Adaptive optics for control of the laser welding process

Institute of Scientific Instruments, AS CR, Královopolská 147, Brno, 612 64, Czech Republic

^a e-mail: mrna@isibrno.cz

Abstract

The laser head with fixed focus optics is commonly used for the deep penetration laser welding. In such case the geometry and position of the beam waist are defined by the focusing lens. If the laser beam incident on the focusing lens is not well collimated but divergent and its divergence can be varied by proper adaptive optical elements, then also the geometry and position of the focus will be changeable. In this way it is possible to affect the energy coupling from the laser beam to the keyhole walls and thus to control the geometry and quality of the weld. In this paper we present a theoretical and numerical study of the beam shaping by adaptive optics and its influence on the weld quality. For the CO₂ laser welding machine the adaptive optics was realized by a deformable mirror and itsti’ect was tested also experimentally. For the solid-state laser welding machine we designed a laser head with changeable distance between the optical fiber and the collimating lens and we simulated its performance.