II-VI Infrared
Even the best of lenses can go bad. Thermal stress, mechanical stress, and contamination can all cause a lens to fail. When that happens, your business can suffer from costly downtime or, in the event of catastrophic lens failure, even costlier laser system repairs. Conversely, you don’t want to discard a perfectly useable lens that may only need to be cleaned to return it to peak performance. The question, then, is how can you determine when a lens is truly in need of replacement? The portable Lens Stress Analyzers from II-VI are designed to enable you to see lens stress before catastrophic lens failure occurs. Or see that an underperforming lens need only be cleaned, rather than discarded. Using a cool-running fluorescent light base and cross-polarizers, Lens Stress Analyzers show thermal stress, mechanical stress, and contamination that the eye cannot see alone. The Lens Stress Analyzer can be operated using the included AC adapter, or for genuine portability, six AAA batteries. At less than the cost of an MP-5 lens, the company’s Lens Stress Analyzers are designed to help you keep your laser system running smoothly by showing you when a lens needs only to be cleaned, and when it needs to be replaced.
www.iiviinfrared.com

Laser Mechanisms Inc.
Laser Mechanisms Inc.’s newly designed FiberCut processing head is engineered for three dimensional robotic cutting of metals, 0.5 mm to 6 mm thick, using fiber-coupled lasers in harsh production environments.

FiberCut is designed as a compact, low moving mass head that minimizes inertia transfer to the robot support arm.

All connections leading to the head enter at a right angle, including the fiber, providing tight access to parts, easy cable routing and stress reduction on the input fiber. At the head itself, all wiring and assist gas lines are internally located to eliminate the chance of downtime due to snags and breaks. To help extend the life of the internal optics, FiberCut features a protective cover glass that is easily accessible via a cartridge style drawer.

The FiberCut system consists of the cutting head, fiber collimator, linear drive with position measuring, and an internal, low-noise height sense system that is insensitive to cutting plasma or piercing debris. The head works with all leading fiber-delivered laser systems up to 4 kW with wavelengths of 1,064/1,080 nm.

“With FiberCut we started with a clean sheet of paper and integrated everything we know about laser processing into its design,” says Mark Taggart, managing director at Laser Mechanisms North America.

“The end result is the best cutting head we’ve ever built, and we’ll stack it up against any of our competitors heads for both its superior performance and outstanding value,” addsTaggart.

Laser Mechanisms Inc. manufactures laser beam delivery components and articulated arm systems for high power CO2, YAG, fiber lasers and other wavelengths.
www.lasermech.com