Principle of Operation

Depending on the output power, different effects are achieved e.g. simple heating for soldering purposes or thermal colouring for inscriptions on plastics. At higher power levels, the material locally melts and with the help of a gas jet (e.g. oxygen) blown coaxial to the laser beam the steel is cut.
Within this system a sealed-off, RF excited 100 Watt CO2 laser is used. This power level allows the performance of a large variety of material processing like welding, cutting, soldering, etc.
The laser as well as the workstation is controlled by a computer. By means of an external CAD program, the structure or shape to be processed is generated as an HPGL file and passed to the system where a parser converts it to movement commands for the motorised X-Y stage.
The working area is 100 x 100 mm and for safety reasons completely covered in such a way that the entire laser system is classified as a class I laser.