Beam profiling with BEAMAGE-4M-FOCUS: low cost, large aperture!

24 Nov 2023

In many applications, like cutting, welding, and additive manufacturing, it’s crucial to know what the laser beam intensity profile looks like. It could either enhance final product quality, avoid catastrophic failure, or simply boost processing speed. At the end of the day, all of these scenarios would translate into a substantial amount of money left on the table if the laser beam was left unchecked.

Gentec-EO with its BEAMAGE-4M profiling cameras lineup, is the ideal partner to provide cost-effective solutions to get complete and reliable data at a fraction of the cost of what’s out there. This statement is especially true when BEAMAGE-4M-FOCUS is concerned, enabling the capture of very large 20.5 mm x 20.5 mm laser beams for an affordable price without compromising on performance.

As part of the BEAMAGE-4M family, it comes with up-to-date connectivity with USB 3.0 and an SMA external trigger. An SMA-BNC adapter and a USB-C adaptor are also included for more flexibility. No external power supply is required, simply plug your camera into a PC and you’re set.

With a 4 Mpixel CMOS sensor sensitive from 350 nm to 1100 nm and an effective pixel size of about 10 µm, the BEAMAGE-4M-FOCUS won’t miss even the smallest detail, but as long as your beam is larger than 120 µm. If a smaller beam size is expected, users should definitely opt for the standard BEAMAGE-4M instead, offering the same performances but with a 5.5 µm pixel size and a lower cost.

A great tool should naturally come with an efficient and user-friendly interface. How useful would the best tool in the world be if the users were not able to operate it or if you had to buy the interface separately? It’s with that thinking in mind that we conceived the software to operate BEAMAGE cameras. It can be downloaded for free on our website. It gives iso-compliant measurements and lets the user choose from various beam size definitions, like 4σ, 1/e², FWHM, or custom % of maximum. It enables either postponed raw-data analysis, live 2D and 3D graphical visualization, or both. Because even then, we couldn’t plan for every scenario, we are providing a free SDK for additional flexibility and integration possibilities.

Consequently, when in need of high-performance, reliable, and cost-effective profiling solutions for a large laser beam, the BEAMAGE-4M-FOCUS is your partner for accuracy.