by trwalters001 » Mon Jul 25, 2011 10:28 pm
Hi All,
I had a very nice factory-made beam combiner on my system. I wasn't getting the speed/cutting capability I thought I should have with a 60W tube. I measured the power after the combiner and 1st mirror... I was getting 27W! I removed the combiner and was getting 53W. The combiner was aligned correctly, and was coaxial with the CO2 beam the whole way to the cutting head. This seems to be a lot of wasted power, but there is CO2 beam reflection off of both combiner surfaces as well as absorption by the ZnSe itself.
So - unless you have a way to measure CO2 power, you might be surprised by the results of a beam combiner. The knife-edge idea is good, however.
Tim