Comparisons of different 2-D laser beam scanners

Abstract

For many scanning applications, the scan line straightness, linearity, and influence of mechanical wobble and eccentricity on a scanner's performance are important. Some different 2-D scanners are compared on a common specification of a total resolution of 6.25 million pixels. According to our analyses, the polygon-mirror system offers the best straightness but is the most sensitive to mechanical wobble and eccentricity.1 Different holographic 2-D scanners are also investigated, and their performances depends strongly on design parameters and on the configurations. The scan line straightness of the grating scanner’s system is comparable with that of a polygon mirror.2 The scan line linearity of the scanner with an auxiliary reflector3 is the best one. The simplicity and therefore the expected reliability of holographic scanners may influence people to prefer holographic scanners. However many technical problems remain to be solved before holographic scanners can be widely used.