Inspection and cleaning method of fiber laser output lens

Inspection and cleaning method of fiber laser output lens

When customer service personnel provide after-sales service to customers, they often receive such feedback and questions from customers when using our fiber lasers:

Due to improper operation methods, especially in the process of inserting the jumper head into the cutting head, the lens of the laser output head (also known as the jumper head) is easily polluted by the outside world, what should I do?

Contact customer service immediately? Or to repurchase the machine?

How do I properly clean my lenses when the lens is contaminated due to improper storage of jumper tips when not in use?

Is there a convenient and effective way to self-detect and clean the output lens of fiber lasers?

Are special cleaning tools required? Will the cleaning steps be cumbersome?

In fact, the inspection and cleaning of lens contamination is not as troublesome as you think. The following are the methods and steps for inspecting and cleaning lenses summarized by our professional engineers, and see if it is easy to get started.

1. Select the environment

Before you need to open the jumper port and clean the lens for inspection and cleaning, you must choose a dust-free environment, preferably in a clean room, to reduce the impact of environmental dust on the cleaning effect and even secondary pollution to the lens. .

2. Prepare tools

As the saying goes: "If a worker wants to do a good job, he must first sharpen his tools".

Before we can actually start inspecting and cleaning the lenses, we need to have the right tools ready.

Suggested tools to choose from: small brush, small strong light flashlight, blowing balloon (or compressed air can), cleaning agent, dust-free paper, optical cotton swab, etc., as shown in the picture below.

If you need to travel a lot for work reasons, you can put these tools in a small tool bag for easy portability.

In addition to the above tools, if conditions permit, it is also recommended to wear finger cots or gloves before cleaning.

3. Check the jumper lens

There are generally two inspection methods for fiber laser jumper lenses:

strong light irradiation

This is the most common method of checking. Tilt the rotating lens or flashlight, and observe whether there are stains and marks on the lens by rotating the light.

interference fringe method

If there is an interference light source in the accessory, you can observe whether there is contamination on the lens by reflecting the light and dark interference fringes.

4. Clean according to the degree of pollution

After checking the lens by the method in step 3, the degree of contamination of the lens can be preliminarily judged. For different degrees of contamination, we need to take corresponding methods to deal with it.

There are generally three types of pollution levels and corresponding treatment methods:

light dust

Optical lenses generally attract some dust on the surface due to static electricity, which are all light dust.

Therefore, it is generally possible to use a blower or a compressed air tank to blow away the dust to achieve the cleaning effect.

Note: When blowing, you cannot blow the blowing port vertically, you need to blow the blowing port obliquely along the edge of the lens.

Moderate traces

If the contamination traces on the lens are some stains or fingerprints and other stains that cannot be cleaned by blowing air, the following methods need to be used to clean up.

Method 1: Brush and pliers cleaning method

Here you will need the cleaning brush and detergent from the kit mentioned above.

Cleaning steps:

Wet the brush with a cleaning agent (be sure to use a cleaning agent that is allowed by the coating of the lens, so as not to corrode the coating);

Keep the brush parallel to the lens, gently brush the surface of the optical lens, and repeat until the optical lens is completely clean;

A new cleaning brush is recommended for each wipe.

If you don't have a professional cleaning brush, you can also choose a folded lens paper that is folded to a width similar to the width of your optical lenses.

When using lens paper, be careful not to directly touch the lens paper that will be in contact with the optical lens with your hands.

step:

Hold the lens paper with pliers;

Let the folded part soak in the cleaning agent and keep it parallel to the lens;

Gently brush the surface of the optical lens and repeat until the optical lens is completely clean;

It is recommended to use new lens tissue for each wipe.

Method 2: Dust-free cotton swab cleaning method

It is recommended to use imported dust-free cotton swabs, and select the appropriate size of cotton swabs according to the size of the lens.

Cleaning steps:

Dip a cotton swab with an appropriate amount of detergent;

Then click into the center of the lens, rotate clockwise a little bit and move it to the outside to wipe it, do not wipe it back and forth.

(Legend: How to clean Raycus QCS jumper with a clean cotton swab)

No matter which one of the above two methods you choose, you need to use a compressed air can or a blower to blow the lens a few times after wiping. If there are still stains left, repeat the above cleaning steps until the optical lens is completely clean.

(PS: The above methods do not include cleaning methods that need to remove the protective lens. Such as drip and drag removal method, lens paper cleaning method, etc.)

heavy pollution

If there are stains on the lens that are difficult to clean, such as grease, it is a serious pollution of the lens, and a more complicated immersion cleaning method is required to clean it.

In this case, the engineer recommends that you contact our professional after-sales service personnel, and use professional technicians to clean the door or send it back to the company for original cleaning.

Tips

Although there are not many steps to clean the lens by yourself, it is not difficult, but in actual operation, Raycus engineers still want to remind everyone to pay attention to the following points:

1) During the operation, be careful not to let hard objects touch the polished surface of the lens.

2) Before cleaning the lens, make sure that the cleaning agent used cannot corrode the lens coating.

3) When using the laser, when removing or closing the cap of the jumper head, the direction of the jumper head port is inclined downward.

4) In the case of not using the laser, be sure to bring the jumper head cap provided by Raycus.

pay attention

When you use Raycus fiber lasers on a daily basis, once you find that the output lens of the fiber laser is contaminated, you must clean it in time and follow the principle of "early inspection, early detection, and early cleaning".

Otherwise, in the process of continuous use, the stain will absorb the laser light, causing the temperature of the stain to rise, forming a thermal lens phenomenon, which will affect the processing technology; if the pollution is serious, it will cause burns and damage to the coating of the lens.

Regular inspection and timely cleaning will help maintain the processing capacity of the fiber laser, as well as prolong the life of the laser.