Multispot optics for beam shaping of high-power single-mode and multimode lasers

The performance of various laser technologies, such as welding, laser powder bed fusion (LPBF), brazing, cladding, and sheet metal cutting, based on the use of high-power multimode fiber lasers, fiber-coupled solid-state, and diode lasers, can be improved using the patent pending beam-shaping optics providing optimal energy distributions by splitting the laser beam into several separate spots in the working plane and variable energy sharing between these spots. Various patterns, such as square, line, and rhombus, consisting of four or nine separate spots, are expected to eliminate or reduce spatter and to realize optimum temperature distributions in the melt pool and stabilizing the processes in the welding of tailored blanks, copper and aluminum parts in the production of batteries, zinc-coated steel, cladding, and LPBF. Because multimode lasers have a comparably low spatial coherence characterized by large beam parameter products or beam quality (M²) values, it is difficult to control the intensity distribution by methods other than imaging the fiber end with a collimator and a focusing objective. The proposed solution is a combination of fiber end imaging and geometrical separation of focused spots perpendicular to the optical axis using special optical components and creating a working spot as a combination of several spots. Varying the energy portions in separate spots and the distances between them make it possible to optimize common spot intensity distributions for particular applications. To ensure reliable operation with multi-kW lasers, the refractive optical components of the multispot devices are implemented from athermal optical materials characterized by insignificant thermal lensing and, hence, negligible thermal focus shift and spherical aberration. The article presents descriptions of multispot optics and examples of intensity profile measurements and application results, while the reduction in spattering was observed using multispot laser welding. It is concluded that the melt pool flows homogenize when applying several laser spots compared to a single spot. The possibility of tailoring melt pool dimensions in LPBF was shown.