Ness Ziona, Israel, October 2021 - Holo/Or, the world leader in high-power Diffractive Optical Elements (DOE) manufacturing, is proud to present its novel concept for enhancing laser welding speed using Flexishaper diffractive beam shaping to generate a spot and surrounding ring illumination pattern with controlled full-range adjustable power ratio between the spot and ring.

With recent increase in the availability of high-powered NIR fiber lasers at affordable costs, power is practically no longer the limiting factor of laser welding process speed. Instead, other physical phenomena such as spattering, humping and weld porosity become dominant at high weld speed. These phenomena have been shown to be substantially reduced when using a special illumination profile consisting of a concentric ring and spot. However, the optimal power ratio between the spot and the ring differs for different welding process parameters and different system setups, and so an adjustable ring-to-spot ratio enables the system manufacturer to find the optimal work point for each process.

In order to address this demand Holo/Or has launched the Flexishaper beam shaper for controlled adjustable ring-to-spot ratio. Flexishaper is a diffractive-shaping solution which consists of two identical diffractive optical elements (DOEs)

placed on the same optical axis which, when rotated against one another can shape the beam propagated through them from 100% of the power in the central spot to ~80% of the power at the surrounding ring with almost no energy at the center, with a continuous full range control of the power ratio in between these states.

These elements can easily be installed into off-the-shelf manual or motorized rotation mounts to create an optical module. This module can be integrated in multiple configurations into the optical axis requiring no high NA or other costly optics different from the standard laser welding optics. The Flexishaper pair can be used with both single mode and multi-mode lasers, and can be adapted for large beams typically used with multi-kW lasers, thus enabling a large range of macro and micro-welding processes. Once the optimal ratio for the process has been found, the module can be replaced with a single static DOE tailored to generate the exact needed ratio, providing a cost-effective solution at larger machine series.

Holo/Or can easily tailor the pattern to fit customers' application needs and laser power.

Holo/Or, an Israel-based manufacturer, offers a vast variety of diffractive optics products; including multi-channel beam splitters, beam shapers (Top Hat), homogenizers/diffusers, multi-focal lenses, beam samplers, and vortex lenses. Customers around the world use our products for applications in medicine, material processing, and measurement solutions.

For more information, click here: https://www.holoor.co.il/flexishaper-ring-to-spot-beam-shaping-optical-module/