Abstract

Recently, the power of the CO₂ laser oscillator increased; in Japan, the maximum power of a commercial CO₂ laser oscillator is now 10 kW, but the needs of higher-power laser oscillators are expected to increase in future. However, the use of CO₂ laser welding does neat grow much, and we believe that there are two major reasons for the fact that highpower CO; laser welding has not been widely used: the large laser plasma generated at the welding point, and laser processing stability is difficult to secure as the power increases because of performance instability of the transmission optical components.

© 1992 Optical Society of America