The influence of pulse shaping on welding Available to Purchase

Pulsed lasers employ a power supply designed for delivering high peak powers during individual laser pulses. These lasers with high peak powers offer greater material processing capabilities than their average power rate might indicate. GSI Lumonics developed and patented the first switch-mode DC power supply for pulsed lasers that allowed almost any shape of the pulse waveform to be created and used via software control. Just creating a consistent pulse shape, as the switch-mode supply produced, was quite an improvement. Now with the ability to control the pulse peak power and duration in real time, we have a process that has been called “PULSE SHAPING”. “Shaping” a pulse is simply adding sectors of certain height and width to a standard Main sector to build it up, like taking building blocks of different sizes and laying them next to each other. This paper discusses results achieved with pulse shaping on a range of materials.