Laser Power Mon­i­tor­ing (LPM) is an on-axis mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem that con­tin­u­ously mea­sures and doc­u­ments TAR­GET and AC­TUAL emit­ted laser out­put through­out the pro­duc­tion process. Thereby, any ex­ist­ing de­vi­a­tions are recorded and dis­played rel­a­tive to each other.

The time-based mea­sure­ment of the AC­TUAL out­put is con­verted by means of beam un­cou­pling in the op­ti­cal beam path and re­flec­tion on a de­tec­tor unit. The sys­tem de­tects any slow but con­stant de­vi­a­tions in per­for­mance, e.g. due to dam­age to sen­si­tive op­ti­cal com­po­nents or an abrupt drop in out­put due to a po­ten­tial fail­ure of a laser diode.

On the one hand, the mod­ule can be used as an early warn­ing sys­tem for pre­vent­ing ma­chine down­time with tar­geted mea­sures when ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties occur. On the other hand, it makes an im­por­tant con­tri­bu­tion to qual­ity as­sur­ance thanks to its process doc­u­men­ta­tion.

Both the TAR­GET and AC­TUAL out­put are dis­played as out­put over time. It also dis­plays the per­cent­age de­vi­a­tion of both val­ues. The mea­sure­ment data is im­me­di­ately avail­able for analy­sis, and the so­lu­tion cre­ates a re­port once the process is com­plete.

Parameter Name	Parameter Value
Type	laser power