100 watt fiber optic yag

[James Stokes]

Some one is trying to sell me a 100 watt fiber optic yag medical laser, It is a hand held deal. Does any one have any idea how I would go about hooking this up to a motion control system to use for engraving? He is asking $800 for the system.

[Richard Rumancik]

Just some thoughts. You will need a few things:

1. The motion equipment (probably belt driven is best as you will be rastering primarily). A lead-screw system might be too slow for rastering due to high inertia of the raster axis.

2. A controller (servo or stepper) to go with the motion equipment.

3. A program or driver to interface with the controller. Generally in the CNC world these use g-code but that is not very suitable for this application. I would suggest you investigate something like LinkMotion for lasers from Solustan Inc. I have not used it but am just going by the description on the website. It acts like a printer driver. You would have to find out if it works for controlling a YAG (it is marketed as a driver for co2 lasers). It needs to have the ability to turn on/off and pulse the laser in an appropriate manner.

4. You will need to "break in" to the control electronics on the medical YAG. You might need some schematics and possibly tech assistance to do this. If it is a commercially available laser the laser manufacturer may be able to help. In the medical field they might not be pulsing the laser in the same way as needed for marking metal so you would need to determine if the laser functions can be "accessed" easily. Otherwise you would have to strip off the electronics and might need to find a suitable YAG controller board.

This would be an interesting project but don't underestimate the time, money, and effort that will be required.

[Mike Mackenzie]

James,

I do not think you can get a 100 watt handheld laser my guess is that it is 100 mw (milliwatts) completely different animal.

[James Stokes]

You are probably right on that Mike. He is telling me 100 watts though and I wondered about that.
I think I am going to pass on it, The more I think on it the more trouble it sounds like.

[Richard Rumancik]

While 100 watt YAG medical lasers exist, they are not hand held by any means. I thought James meant that the delivery optics was hand held which is normal for medical lasers. Generally the medical lasers have a cabinet with the laser and electronics in it and a fiber optic delivery system. If the whole unit that is for sale is hand held, then it is more likely to have a small diode laser and deliver a fraction of a watt. That would not be useful for marking applications.

I didn't want to discourage you, James, but even if you find a large enough laser this would not be a small project. There is a lot of DIY activity in the CNC world and there are plenty of relatively low-cost products, software, and expertise (newsgroups) available to help. But this is primarily related to CNC routing, milling, and turning. There is very little DIY activity in the laser field and not much for products and suitable software. So it would certainly be a learning experience and may take more time and money than anticipated.

[Dan Hintz]

The terms 'medical' and 'YAG' don't jive with me. Due to wavelengths, YAG is primarily for metal (though it can certainly do damage to skin). A 100milliWatt YAG doesn't sound correct, either. Are you sure this is a YAG system at all? What does the lasing module look like? If it's a small stack (think fist sized), YAG is the most likely... if it's a couple of feet in length, it's most likely CO2.

[Scott Shepherd]

I have a friend who does laser skin treatments, and yes, it's a YAG laser.

[James Stokes]

He says it is a yag, with a fiber optic delivery it sounds pretty big from what he tells me. But again I do not think I could do anything cost efficent with it.

[Richard Rumancik]

If you want to see a 100 watt medical YAG look here:

www.dornier.com/asia/english_gb/products/lasers/medilas5100ND/description.htm (http://www.dornier.com/asia/english_gb/products/lasers/medilas5100ND/description.htm)


This one is called a continuous wave (CW) laser but it also seems that it can be pulsed. When YAGs are pulsed you can get peak powers much higher than the rating (this effect doesn't work with CO2 lasers). So with a 100 watt laser it is possible to get peak power many times that amount. I think with marking lasers you will want the option of pulsing, so some medical lasers might be suitable for marking. But the controls are really set up for surgical applications and I would think you would need to hack into it extensively to convert it into a marking laser.

[Dan Hintz]

Didn't read the post clearly the first time... the word fiber should have clued me into that fact that it's YAG.

[John Minton]

I looked at one a couple of week ago.

What I found out was that 100W is running what they call Multi-Mode if you run single mode which is what we need you only get about 12W this is still useful but you will have to install a Q-Switch. Like someone said do not think this will be quick or easy but it can be done.

[Charlie Bice]

That's a common description in the laser world.

In the lab we expect to get things like multi-mode devices and install Qswitches for increasing pulse power. A LOT of tweaking.

Constructing a CAM system is not difficult, but, if you do not know what you are doing then it will be very frustrating. Software interface is the biggest concern.

That offer is not really as good a deal as it sounds, although a YAG laser is really good at doing a lot of things, especially on metal.

charlie

[David Lavaneri]

Although Fiber Markers and YAG laser machines emit very similar wavelengths, they're entirely different animals.

A fiber marker's primary benefit is exceptionally high reliability, operating maintenance free, without routine replacement of consumables, e.g., flash lamps, diode racks, filters.

Fiber markers are designed to operate under rough industrial conditions (vibration, dust, humidity, etc.) - 50,000 hrs.

David "The Stunt Engraver" Lavaneri

[Doug Griffith]

It might be worth it if you already have a CNC router. You could possibly swap out the spindle for the hand piece with some creativity. Etching wouldn't be practical though because CNCs just aren't fast enough. You'd have to follow paths like your were cutting with C02.

[James Stokes]

I am going to have to stop looking at Craigs list. I was looking on there today and someone had a 70 watt CO2 tube with an articulating arm from a nother medical laser. Just for grins I went out and looked at it. Ended up giving the guy 10 bucks for it and brought it home. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it.

[Dan Hintz]

Holy cow, $10? You'll often pay 20-30 times that just for shipping those arms from someone on eBay. That's an excellent price if it was only good for some spare optics or air tubing! Good find!