Abstract

We report novel findings in the field of real time closed-loop control and monitoring of laser processing. Using a novel coaxial multispectral imaging system, we compare the performance of uncooled MWIR PbSe sensors to visible CMOS sensors. Comparison is performed in two different tasks: closed-loop control of laser cladding and monitoring of laser welding. In both cases, PbSe imagers show a clear advantage in terms of reliability and accuracy as for the performance achieved using the same state-of-the-art processing algorithms on images acquired simultaneously during the same laser processing trials.

© 2017 Optical Society of America