Abstract

Concerning the very strong demand of the industry on high power lasers with excellent beam quality, a new concept of a compact 6 kW CO₂-laser with coaxial discharge has been combined with the idea of the Herriot - Cell. Both advantages, the compactness and the simple concept of the 6 kW laser, having a toroidal resonator with a ringshaped beam contour, and the very high beam quality of the Herriot - Cell could giude to new HQM-laser concept. The possibility to use both resonator types on the same machine, industrial performance in high quality laser welding with 6 kW and laser cutting with a beam power up to 4 kW could be established.

© 1998 IEEE