The service life of the laser tube

Laser tube, full name: glass sealed-off CO2 laser. Because this laser is encapsulated by a glass tube, it is commonly called a laser tube.

Working principle: High-voltage discharge excites high-concentration CO2 gas to produce a laser with a wavelength of 10.6um.

It is mainly composed of hard glass, resonant cavity and electrode.

1. Hard glass part; this part is composed of GG17 material fired into discharge tube, water cooling jacket, air storage jacket and return air pipe. The sealed-off CO2 laser is usually a three-layer sleeve structure. The innermost is the discharge tube, the middle is the water purifier, the outermost layer is the gas storage sleeve, and the return gas pipe is used to connect the discharge tube and the gas storage tube.

2. Resonant cavity part: This part is composed of a total mirror and an output mirror. The total mirror of the resonant cavity is generally based on optical glass, the surface is plated with gold film, and the reflectance of the gold film mirror near 10.6um is above 98%; the output mirror of the resonant cavity generally uses the infrared material germanium that can transmit 10.6um radiation. (Ge) is the substrate, and it is made by plating a multi-layer dielectric film on it.

3. Electrode part: CO2 lasers generally use cold cathodes, which are cylindrical in shape. The choice of cathode material has a great impact on the life of the laser. The basic requirements for cathode materials are: low sputtering rate and low gas absorption rate.

The main specifications and models of the laser tube are based on the laser power as the most important basis. Common laser tube models are: 40w, 60w, 80w, 100w, 130w, 150w.

Laser tubes of different powers are mainly divided into different lengths. For example, the 60W laser tube is 1200mm or 1250mm, and the 80W length is generally 1600mm.

Laser tubes are mainly used in CO2 laser processing equipment. Such as laser engraving machine, laser cutting machine, laser marking machine, etc.

Regarding the life of the laser tube, taking an 80mm diameter laser tube as an example, when the ignition current is 6ma, the lifespan can reach more than 10,000 hours, and when it is greater than 6ma, the lifespan will be shortened accordingly. That is to say, the greater the current, the shorter the lifetime. In actual use, and under standard conditions, the life span is generally about 5000 hours. As a vulnerable part of the laser machine, proper maintenance can also increase the service life.