Making 500w laser source for laser cutting machine.

[GeramyL]

Hi,

I am looking at buying 100 Sharp GH04C05Y9G 445nm to 450nm Laser Diodes. I am hoping I can get about 500W to cut stainless steel plates with a thickness of 2mm. I believe even 250W might do this very well. I know that as the wavelength goes down, the wattage required to engrave or cut is less. Such as CO2 Lasers and Fiber Lasers. CO2 required more power and creates more heat than fiber and so on. So in theory 500W should at least be 1kw equivalent or even more than a fiber laser, most fiber lasers are upwards of 1100nm anyways my idea is to create a laser source box and then transport the light via specialized transport cable such as RayCus or CloudRay I believe does. I can design the driver board for the lasers and design the container and build the container I need to hold the diodes, I can also design the cooling and so on, but my expertise at this moment does not go into transporting light and further. I do have a basic understanding of it. I also have the sharp specification document attached. they are 5W diodes.

 

[kecked]

Cutting wavelength is largely material dependent. You need to use a source that maximizes absorption of the radiation. You also need to pack the energy in as small a volume as possible so the cut is not inches wide. Fiber lasers are used because they can produce the energy density in such a small spot size. I have no idea how to pack hundreds of diodes into such a beam. I’d suggest you stay with CO2 or a fiber laser designed for the job. Also reflection of blue light scattered will be particularly dangerois to your eyes so you should enclose this and use observation cameras fitted with ND filters. Not saying can’t be done but the optics will not be simple.
at most I think you could pbs/waveplate four and then bundle the four packs into knife edge so maybe 16 in total. Then focus this down with a lens. Trying to stick that in a fiber isn’t going to happpen and the result out the far end if you succeed will be very divergent but guess a lens could bring it back to a focus.
not an easy project.