Лазерный мир

V. Biryukov // Photonics, 2/2013, p: 46-53

Laser technologies have overstepped the walls of laboratories and gone out to the industrial space long ago. Metal treatment with the high-power lasers has turned into the standard process. And now the treatment of materials with the less powerful laser beam also turns into the standard technologies. But there are niches where the effects of interaction of the laser radiation with substance are still at the research stage. And though there are many laser technologies, authors decided to consider those technologies in which the developers from our country achieved certain success.

Treatment of metal with the radiation of the highpower СО2- or fiber lasers is the most capacious part of the modern market of materials laser treatment; it forms approximately 70% of the total volume of lasers sale. Laser systems for the sheet metal cutting gave 5 billion of sales last year. Among highpower radiation sources 20% falls to the share of laser systems with fiber lasers but still gas lasers play the dominating role [1]. However, it is getting rather crowded at the domestic market of manufacturers of the laser equipment for the engineering industry. Parameters of the laser facilities of various manufacturers are comparable to each other so the competition takes place in the area of after-sales service and velocity of the spare parts delivery. Let us consider the innovations of the domestic laser technological facilities [2,3].
National Institute of Aviation Technologies (NIAT) OJSC and Rukhservomotor LLC (Minsk) produce the laser technological equipment for the dimensional treatment of components from the plane sheet billets, laser facilities for the flat work nesting of metallic and non-metallic components. The fiber lasers of the IRE-Polyus Scientific and Technical Association (STA) LLC with the capacity of 2-4 kW and linear motors are used in the models КЛР-2D manufactured by the NIAT OJSC and LaserCUT-3015-3 manufactured by the Rukhservomotor LLC. No-load speed of these systems is 100 m/min and 180 m/min upon the repositioning error of 0.05 mm and 0.01 mm respectively. Equipment is intended for the cutting of carbon steel up to 25  mm in thickness, corrosion-resistant steel – up to 10 mm in thickness, aluminum – up to 8 mm in thickness, brass – up to 5 mm in thickness. Besides, the technology of cutting of the organoplastics up to 8  mm, glass fiber reinforced plastics up to 6 mm, carbon fiber reinforced plastics up to 4 mm was welltested on the КЛР-2D.

Lazerniy Tsentr LLC, Saint Petersburg developed and commercialized the model ЛТУ RX-20 intended for the cutting of thin gage materials (up to 0.5  mm in thickness) and deep chasing [4]. Facility is created on the basis of 20 W ИЛМИ-0.5-20 fiber laser manufactured by the IRE-Polyus STA, LLC. Laser functions in the pulse mode with the pulse repetition frequency f=20- 100 kHz, pulse duration τ~120 ns. Pulse energy is up to 1 mJ. Warranted operating time of laser is not less than 30000 hours, the air cooling is used, power consumption is ~300 W, warm-up period
does not surpass 3 minutes. Laser does not require the special maintenance and additional system of cooling. X-Y two-axis table is used with the stepping motors, treatment field dimensions are 250×250 mm, positioning accuracy is 2.5 µm. Possibility of the rotator installation for the cutting of ware with the cylindrical surface is provided for the expanding of manufacturing capabilities in RX-20. Programming is implemented in the formats of AutoCAD and CorelDRAW, also the programming in manual mode is possible. The list of fields where the RX-20 can be applied is very big: manufacturing of masks for the deposition of soldering paste on the printed circuit boards, staves for the dot-matrix printers, pressings of semiconductor lasers, cutting of the medical stents from the stainless steel thin-walled tubes. Another important area can be the application of RX-20 for the deep marking – chasing. The fact is that at the moment the MiniMarker 2 scanatory systems are used for the marking in regular version or the TurboMarker population of velocity markers with regard to the requirements of European safety. They provide the marking speed up to several meters per second. However, the marking depth is relatively not high and mainly is not more than 50-100 µm. At the same time quite a number of tasks exists where the marking depth is required to be much higher – up to 0.5 mm. Simple increase of laser capacity does not give wanted effect for a variety of reasons. In this case particularly the RX-20 can be used. Upon that the marking speed decreases because the marking is accomplished at the expense of relatively slow motion of the component with the help of coordinate table, however, the marking depth considerably grows.
Another broad technological application of the laser facilities consists in the growing of monocrystalline fibers (MCF).

A source: http://www.photonics.su/files/article_pdf/3/article_3650_182.pdf