<title>Beam characterization of an industrial CO<formula><inf><roman>2</roman></inf></formula> laser: results of a workshop within the EUREKA project EU-1269 "CHOCLAB"</title>

Abstract

Within the EUREKA-project "CHOCLAB" a workshop was organised, where several panners analysed the beam of an industrial CO2 laser device. The goal was to qualify the ISO 1 1 146 standard by using different measurement techniques. This paper compares the results of the determination of the beam propagation factor and beam widths.The following test methods for measuring the beam width were applied: determination of the power density distribution with a rotating pinhole device and subsequent evaluation of beam widths, determination of the power density with a pyroelectric camera and subsequent evaluation of beam widths, moving knife edge method.For the measured data various methods of evaluation were used. These include data processing with different filters, evaluation of averaged power density distributions as well as different algorithms for curve fitting.Despite the different methods of measurement and evaluation the results showed reasonable agreement. This proves the applicability of the ISO 1 1146 standard to an industrial CO2 laser device.

Instruments and standard measurement procedures for laser beam characterization

“…The main goal of these ,,Round Robin" experiments was to test the applicability of the proposed standard measurement procedures to different important types of industrial laser devices (in particular high power C02-lasers and pulsed Nd:YAG-lasers) ( [20], [21], [22]). In the following the results of a ,,Round Robin" experiment held at the IFSW in Stuttgart will be discussed.…”