Measure Laser Power, Position, and Beam Size – Now with RS232

June 12, 2019

Daniel Bonder

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Yes, it’s a cliche, but this is definitely true when it comes to BeamTrack.
BeamTrack Power / Position / Size (PPS) sensors combine three laser measurement functions to help you understand exactly what your laser is doing.

What it measures

Power – BeamTrack measures laser power as an Ophir standard thermal sensor.
Position – Splitting the thermopile into quadrants allows us to track laser position.
Beam size – Ophir’s patented BeamTrack size measurement enables us to measure beam size relatively well without the expense of a beam profiler.

What else you can do with it

The interplay between these measurement provides users with even more applications:

Power + Beam size – Use it together to calculate power density, a very good single-value indicator of laser effectiveness
Position – Use it to track the laser pointing stability and drift
Power + Position – Combine it to simply create a super-accurate power meter, as the position (and beam size) measurements can be used just to make sure that the laser is pointing at the center of the sensor and isn’t too large to be measured. This boosts the already high accuracy of Ophir power meters.

RS232 or Smart Head (Meter Display)

Nothing I wrote above is new. Our customers are taking the features we provide and using them in ways we didn’t even consider.

The real news here is that Ophir’s line of BeamTrack sensors can now be ordered with RS232 output for integration into your system.
This could be useful, for example, to have online alignement control, with the measurement feedback integrated into your system.
But as I said before – you’re the customer, it’s your application. You know how to use this better than us!

And if you are using these sensors for an application I haven’t even mentioned, let us know!