belax
Member level 2
I have a 20W co2 laser tube (from some medical equipment) and a power supply for 40W tube (from Chinese laser engraver).
The laser tube works fine. It has about D=3.6 mm laser beam.
But I am wondering how fast I can switch on/off my laser tube. My power supply can switch on/off the laser tube with frequencies about 1 kHz. But it is not enough for me.
In the internet I found out that co2 laser tube (by it’s nature) works as low pass filter and you can not switch it on and off with frequency above some fc=~5khz. Some RF excited laser tubes can work faster, but not much faster.
I will explain why it is not enough for me to have 1 khz switching frequency.
I am trying to do a fast engraver based on “flying mirror approach”. My mirror-lens system can fly back and forward with speed up to 3000 mm/s. Let say I want to engrave some picture on PMMA with 508 dpi resolution (20 points per mm). In order to achieve this, my laser should be capable of switching on and off with frequency = 3000 * 20/2 = 30 000 hz.=30khz (the pulse with should be about 16 us).
With my current power supply I can do this job lowering the laser-output power and speed to 50 mm/s speed.
So, the main question: Are there a way to switch on and off the co2 laser tube with frequency up to 100 khz? I know that there are (on the planet) co2 laser engraving systems with higher speed and resolution that I wrote about above.
Are there any acousto-optic deflectors for co2 lasers?
Thank you very much.
The laser tube works fine. It has about D=3.6 mm laser beam.
But I am wondering how fast I can switch on/off my laser tube. My power supply can switch on/off the laser tube with frequencies about 1 kHz. But it is not enough for me.
In the internet I found out that co2 laser tube (by it’s nature) works as low pass filter and you can not switch it on and off with frequency above some fc=~5khz. Some RF excited laser tubes can work faster, but not much faster.
I will explain why it is not enough for me to have 1 khz switching frequency.
I am trying to do a fast engraver based on “flying mirror approach”. My mirror-lens system can fly back and forward with speed up to 3000 mm/s. Let say I want to engrave some picture on PMMA with 508 dpi resolution (20 points per mm). In order to achieve this, my laser should be capable of switching on and off with frequency = 3000 * 20/2 = 30 000 hz.=30khz (the pulse with should be about 16 us).
With my current power supply I can do this job lowering the laser-output power and speed to 50 mm/s speed.
So, the main question: Are there a way to switch on and off the co2 laser tube with frequency up to 100 khz? I know that there are (on the planet) co2 laser engraving systems with higher speed and resolution that I wrote about above.
Are there any acousto-optic deflectors for co2 lasers?
Thank you very much.