United States

In the field of laser material processing, laser beam cutting is still the commercially most important application. Several 10,000 new 2D flatbed cutting systems are built every year. At the same time, laser cutting of larger sheet thicknesses is increasingly coming into focus of potential customers. Thus, laser powers &amp;gt;20 kW are becoming more and more important to significantly increase productivity in laser cutting, especially for sheet thicknesses &amp;gt;10 mm. Furthermore, laser powers of &amp;gt;40 kW have the potential to compete with plasma cutting, providing better edge quality, less material consumption due to smaller cutting kerfs at higher energy efficiency, thus also lowering CO2 emissions. This market demand is challenged by the intrinsic thermal focus shift of the individual optical elements within the cutting system. Today, optical coatings for up to 20 kW of laser power are often optimized to balance performance vs. economic aspects. Minimizing focus shift can be done by, first, reducing energy deposition within AR-coatings, second, pre-correcting actual shifts by means of approximation, and third, measuring the shift and correcting it in a closed loop control. A detailed analysis of the in-situ thermal focus shift in real applications will be presented, providing an optimal combination of listed measures.

ICALEO 2023

Strategies for Reducing the Thermally Induced Focus-shift in High Power Laser Cutting

focus correction

thermal focus shift

high-power laser cutting

In the field of laser material processing, laser beam cutting is still the commercially most important application. Several 10,000 new 2D flatbed cutting systems are built every year. At the same time, laser cutting of larger sheet thicknesses is increasingly coming into focus of potential customers. Thus, laser powers &gt;20 kW are becoming more and more important to significantly increase productivity in laser cutting, especially for sheet thicknesses &gt;10 mm. Furthermore, laser powers of &gt;40 kW have the potential to compete with plasma cutting, providing better edge quality, less material consumption due to smaller cutting kerfs at higher energy efficiency, thus also lowering CO2 emissions. This market demand is challenged by the intrinsic thermal focus shift of the individual optical elements within the cutting system. Today, optical coatings for up to 20 kW of laser power are often optimized to balance performance vs. economic aspects. Minimizing focus shift can be done by, first, reducing energy deposition within AR-coatings, second, pre-correcting actual shifts by means of approximation, and third, measuring the shift and correcting it in a closed loop control. A detailed analysis of the in-situ thermal focus shift in real applications will be presented, providing an optimal combination of listed measures.

technical paper

**General Chair Welcome**

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Welcome to ICALEO® 2023!
	
We were excited to host the world’s leading international conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in Chicago. The Laser has been shown to have the potential to revolutionize solutions for major global challenges like energy usage and supply, global warming, and CO2 footprint. Even the fusion energy breakthrough is based on laser technology. The conference, with peer-reviewed scientific and technical presentations, focused on the newest results in Micro Applications, Macro Applications, Additive Manufacturing, Beam Shaping and Frontiers in Laser Applications. Additionally, the Battery-Manufacturing Track gave an overview of the process combined with the newest advances in laser application results. 

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Whether this is the first time you are hearing about ICALEO or you are a longtime attendee, you will find something of interest, new ideas, and an excellent opportunity to network with other laser specialists worldwide. 

**Klaus Löffler **  
ICALEO General Chair   
Managing Director, Precitec GmbH

**What is ICALEO?**

ICALEO® brings together the brightest minds, seasoned professionals, and pioneering researchers from around the world. With a laser-focused agenda, ICALEO offers an exceptional platform to delve into the cutting-edge advancements, diverse applications, and transformative research that define lasers and electro-optics.

Participants will be immersed in a dynamic environment that fosters collaborative learning, networking, and idea exchange. Through engaging plenary presentations, technical sessions, an industry business panel, and networking events, attendees gain insights into the forefront of laser technology. From industrial applications to medical breakthroughs, additive manufacturing to materials processing, ICALEO covers the entire spectrum of laser-related disciplines. Moreover, the event serves as a launching pad for synergistic partnerships, paving the way for professionals to forge connections that shape the future of our industry.

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Industrial leaders seeking to stay ahead of the curve in their fields, engineers working on laser applications, and manufacturing experts interested in additive manufacturing and materials processing will find ICALEO to be an invaluable platform. Researchers and scientists exploring the forefront of laser technology, from fundamental principles to groundbreaking applications, will also discover a wealth of knowledge and networking opportunities.

Medical professionals investigating laser-based medical advancements, entrepreneurs seeking to innovate with lasers, educators aiming to stay updated with the latest in laser education, and policy makers shaping the industry's landscape are all essential attendees. Whether you're an established expert or a rising star, the 42nd annual ICALEO promises to offer a diverse ecosystem of expertise, connections, and knowledge sharing that caters to the laser and electro-optics communities.

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ICALEO® brings together the brightest minds, seasoned professionals, and pioneering researchers from around the world. With a laser-focused agenda, ICALEO offers an exceptional platform to delve into the cutting-edge advancements, diverse applications, and transformative research that define lasers and electro-optics.

The ISO 11146-1 is a well know standard for measuring the M-Square value of a laser or laser system. The multi-spot method of measuring the M-Square against the ISO 11146-1 standard has not, to date, been measured one to one against this standard using both the traditional scan method and the multi-spot method. This work validates the multi-spot method against the standard by using the identical optical setup and simply changing the software algorithm to accommodate both methods while staying within the ISO 11146-1 parameters.&nbsp; We then compare the results for the same laser within a very short span of time. This work covers the results of three (3) different ISO compliant measurement methods: full caustic multi-spot, scan method of one spot at a time and a smaller number of multi-spots within 3 different Rayleigh ranges of the beam caustic. The multi-spot method has the significant advantage of providing an ISO compliant measurement within a single laser pulse whether it be a femtosecond, picosecond, nanosecond, or millisecond pulse. The traditional scan method can only provide a time averaged measurement and is not possible in making a single pulse M2 measurement.&nbsp; The multi-spot, therefore, provides instant feedback of the laser performance and reduces the optimization time.

Advances in Laser Cutting Thick Sheet Metal with “Light Tunnel Generators” Materials Processing

In the naval applications, as well as for infrastructure and construction sectors, welding of thick plates (&gt;15 mm) has become of crucial importance. Nowadays, the common techniques involve several passes of traditional Gas-Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) to fill a gap with a precise geometry. These techniques are, inevitably, time consuming due to the necessity of multiple passes, material consuming because of the volume of the gap which needs to be filled and complicated due to the precise preparation of the joints. To overcome these drawbacks, we propose here a Hybrid Laser-Arc Welding (HLAW) technique in a configuration which allowed us to achieve a sound weld of two plates, 20 mm thick, of naval steel EH40 in a single pass. The goal has been obtained with a 16 kW fiber laser and a welding speed of 1500 mm/min. The most important result of this research is that the welds have been performed in a simple butt configuration, with straight edges of the plates and without any chamfer or additional preparation. Moreover, the length of the weld seam, 1 meter, guarantees the stability and the solidity of the process, its scalability over longer plates, and thus, an easy implementation on an industrial machine for massive production. 
This result opens the way to a faster, more reliable, and less costly process for the welding of thick plates. Furthermore, since the constant increase of the achievable laser power, there is the reasonable hope to push the single-pass maximum weldable thickness even further.

Welding of 20 MM Thick EH40 Steel by Means of a Single-Pass Hybrid Laser-Arc Welding Technique.

We present a framework for developing laser weld schedules featuring circular oscillation in the beam trajectory designed to reduce keyhole induced porosity in aluminum welds.&nbsp; Our approach focuses on minimizing the frequency of keyhole collapses during the welding process by stabilizing the keyhole with circular beam oscillation.&nbsp; The approach is guided by the hypotheses that if the oscillation period is less than the characteristic time of keyhole collapse, the keyhole can remain stable.&nbsp; The characteristic keyhole collapse time is governed by the melt density and surface tension, as well as the keyhole radius, which can be increased by utilizing a larger oscillation radius.&nbsp; By eliminating keyhole collapse, the creation of vapor bubbles in the melt flow can be avoided, thus eliminating a major source for weld porosity.&nbsp; &nbsp;To verify these hypotheses, experimental results from laser welding of 3 mm thick aluminum alloy (AA 5754) sheets are presented. The test results confirm that porosity is substantially reduced when the oscillation amplitudes are increased beyond predicted threshold values for different oscillation frequencies.&nbsp; These findings help to elucidate a new mechanism for improving keyhole stability in laser welding processes via laser beam oscillation and provide a framework for developing improved laser weld schedules.

Mechanism-Guided Approach for Porosity Reduction in Laser Welding of Thick Aluminum Sheets

Silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells take advantage of the passivation properties of amorphous silicon: it can be easily doped, deposition temperatures are very low (below 200◦C), and it has very good passivation properties, but it has the drawback of very high sheet resistance for heterojunction emitters. An alternative to the use of a-Si:H in SHJ cells are transition metal oxide (TMO) films. These films have interesting properties as passivators and selective contacts for novel semiconductor devices, i.e. hole transport layers (HTL) or electron transport layers (ETL), and can be deposited on both electrodes of a solar cell. In this work, we present a complete study of the laser ablation of three transition metals that show good properties as p-type front contacts for n-type crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells: WOx, VOx and MoOx. We characterize the ablation process of films deposited on crystalline silicon using laser sources of three different wavelengths (355 nm, 532 nm, and 1064 nm) and in two temporal regimes(picoseconds and nanoseconds). We measure the fluence threshold to remove the transition metal oxide (TMO) film and to induce the damage in the crystalline silicon substrate, determining the parametric window of the process. We also studied the morphology to analyze the relationships between crater dimensions and ablation parameters using confocal microscopy. Complete removal of the three different TMO films was achieved without damaging the silicon substrate. Results of diode isolation and their electrical characteristics are presented, showing the quality of the laser isolation processes.

Selective Laser Ablation of Transition Metal Oxide Thin Films for SHJ Solar Cells

Thermal barrier coating (TBC) has been widely applied to jet engine parts as the protection layer for underneath metal working at high temperature. The ceramic based coating, however will suffer from harsh environment such as hot air and sands can lead to undesired coating spallation and crack failure. This paper introduced a new laser process to improve the TBC resistance to spallation and thermal strain tolerance. Ultrafast laser system&nbsp;&nbsp;has been used to slot micro-scale grooves on coating surface with optimized geometry and function property. Coating life extension is demonstrated with laser slotted coupon and parameter study. Pros and cons of laser slotting compared with other machining methods is analyzed as well.

Pulsed UV Laser-Assisted Doping of Semi-insulating 4H-SiC Substrates for MWIR Detector.

Aerospike engines are a promising type of rocket engine with the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of rocket propulsion systems. Unlike traditional bell-shaped engines, aerospikes have a cone-shaped external contour that allows for more efficient combustion of the propellant in a variety of environmental conditions. The design of aerospike engines presents a challenging task due to their complex internal and external geometries. However, the recent advancements in additive manufacturing (AM) have made it possible to create these complex shapes with greater accuracy and precision. This contribution addresses the complete process&nbsp;chain of an additively manufactured aerospike&nbsp;breadboard engine using kerosene and hydrogen&nbsp;peroxide as propellants. The aerospike was&nbsp;fabricated by laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) using the&nbsp;nickel-based superalloy INCONEL® 718. In order to&nbsp;qualify the material and process for this application,&nbsp;an extensive material characterization campaign&nbsp;including density and roughness measurements,&nbsp;tensile tests at room temperature, 700 °C and&nbsp;900 °C, was conducted. In addition, various&nbsp;geometric features such as triangles, ellipses and&nbsp;circular shapes were generated to determine the&nbsp;maximum unsupported overhang and geometric&nbsp;accuracy. The results were taken into account in the&nbsp;design maturation of the manifold and the cooling&nbsp;channels of the aerospike breadboard engine. Postprocessing&nbsp;included heat treatment, milling, turning&nbsp;and eroding of interfaces, thermal barrier coating (TBC) of&nbsp;thermally stressed surfaces and laser welding of&nbsp;spike and shroud as well as quality assurance.

Process Qualification, Additive Manufacturing, and Post Processing of a Hydrogen Peroxide / Kerosene Aerospike Breadboard Engine

The feedstock capture efficiency on powder laser directed energy deposition is becoming a big challenge on the industrial use of L-DED process for the manufacturing of large-scale AM parts. The powder capture efficiency is dependent of process optimization and the tool-path. The current literature presents a huge range of usual powder efficiency, between 3 – 32% and some specific cases exceeding 90%. The powder-gas jet stream interact with the laser beam adding material locally onto the substrate. Part of this material is captured by the melt pool. The not captured material is affected by the laser beam, causing a material degradation. There is a lack on the literature for studies on the reusability of powder on the L-DED process. This paper presents a comprehensive study on the consequence of laser interaction with SS 316L metal powder particles during the L-DED process using a range of different powder characterization techniques to access the powder morphology, particle size distribution, chemical composition, followability and particle porosity. The study was conducted within eight powder reuse cycles, without adding virgin material to the powder batch. Reduction of PSD range, increase of circularity, improvement on the powder flowability were identified as consequences of powder reuse. The consequence of the laser interaction with particles was further explored using SEM, presenting the continuous modification of the particles across the eight reuse cycles. The oxygen content of the particles was also measured to access the O2 pick-up as a consequence of particle heating.

Powder Degradation as a Consequence of Laser Interaction: A Study of SS 316L Powder Reuse on the Laser Directed Energy Deposition (L-DED) Process

Improving mechanical topology optimization (TO) results by substitution of biomimetic beams is one possibility to achieve designs of mechanical components that are highly sustainable and show good mechanical performance. Due to their geometric complexity such designs were found to be well suited for production by laser additive manufacturing. 
One obstacle of incorporating biomimetics beams in TO designs is the lack of detailed design methodologies. [1] proposed a corresponding design concept. Building on their concept this work presents a detailed methodology for abstraction of TO results to a design consisting of ball nodes and cylindrical beams. Using such an auxiliary design, the internal forces and moments of the beams can be evaluated to allow for the substitution of suitable biomimetic beams to generate biomimetic component designs in a next step. 
The work presents a skeletonization algorithm based on the potential field approach. Using the skeletonization and an additional analysis of the dimensions of the beams in the TO result, the algorithm develops an auxiliary design of the original TO result. 
The final algorithm was applied to three common TO results to obtain one auxiliary component design, each. The developed algorithm was found to generate abstractions that were well-suited for use in the methodology proposed in [1] as internal forces and moments in the abstracted beams could be evaluated with low effort. 
Therefore, the work contributes to a detailed design methodology for biomimetic mechanical components in the field of design for additive manufacturing (DfAM)

Development and Assessment of a Methodology for Abstraction of Topology Optimization Results to Enable the Substitution of Optimized Beams

The biggest challenges for laser-based powder bed fusion of metals (PBF-LB/M) are the slow production and the high part prices combined with process and component defects. Gaussian beams with fixed beam diameters and their characteristic high peak intensities are state-of-the-art in PBF-LB/M. However, Gaussian beams can cause spatter formation, keyholing, and resulting keyhole porosity due to evaporation of the melt. Laser beam shaping has been used in various publications for laser welding and PBF-LB/M to address the challenges mentioned above. Our research at the Professorship of Laser-based Additive Manufacturing focuses on developing beam-shaping technologies to improve the production speed and process quality in PBF-LB/M. The different beam shaping strategies we are evaluating are based on spatial light modulators (= change in wavefront due to local change in refractive index by tilting liquid crystals), acousto-optic deflectors (= ultra-fast deflection of the laser radiation by frequency change of acoustic sound waves), and a multi-core fiber concept (= change in relative intensity distribution via redistribution across fiber cross-section). The study will compare the performance of three different beam shaping technologies for PBF-LB/M and evaluate their design freedom and complexity. The aim is to use beam shaping to achieve a stable melt pool, increase production speed, and reduce resource and energy consumption.

Flexible and Highly Dynamic Beam Shaping Technologies for Additive Manufacturing

Despite the maturity of laser-based powder bed fusion of metals (PBF-LB/M), some barriers prevent the manufacturing process from fully being established in the industry. One drawback is spatter formation, which is disadvantageous to PBF-LB/M for three main reasons. First, adhering spatter can initiate coater collision, resulting in process failure. Second, large ad­hering spatter may cause lack-of-fusion defects as they require more energy to remelt sufficiently compared to unprocessed powder. Furthermore, big non-adhering spatter cannot be recycled as powder. The recycling of small spatter particles potentially results in degraded material properties. Ring-shaped beam profiles have been established for deep penetration welding to reduce spatter formation. Investigations on ring-shaped beam profiles in PBF-LB/M focus on improving productivity and process robustness. Quali­tative spatter reduction in PBF-LB/M using ring-shaped beam profiles has also been reported. This publication quantitatively examines the influence of ring-shaped beam profiles on spatter formation in PBF-LB/M. Image processing algorithms of on-axis high-speed images are utilized for spatter detection and tracking. A self-developed spatter segmentation is used to determine the spatter size. A Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG) filter is combined with a Kalman tracker to count and track the spatter. The results show that spatter formation is highly influenced by the beam profile and the chosen process parameters. Considering the melt track width, ring-shaped beam profiles could reduce the number of spatter per fused area. High numbers of spatter are generated when parameter sets result in balling. Moreover, spatter velocity is primarily dependent on the introduced dimensionless enthalpy.

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Strategies for Reducing the Thermally Induced Focus-shift in High Power Laser Cutting

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