NEW OFF-SITE HIGH-POWER LASER CALIBRATION CAPABILITY.
Multi-kilowatt high-power lasers are being used today for a wide variety of industrial applications, including materials processing Articles on Materials processing include: - process (engineering) a set of transformations of input elements into products
- industrial process, a procedure involving chemical or mechanical steps to aid in the manufacture of an item or items
, cutting, and welding welding, process for joining separate pieces of metal in a continuous metallic bond. Cold-pressure welding is accomplished by the application of high pressure at room temperature; forge welding (forging) is done by means of hammering, with the addition of heat. . Although detectors used with these laser systems need measurement traceability, the high cost of the large and expensive lasers has limited NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology, Washington, DC, www.nist.gov) The standards-defining agency of the U.S. government, formerly the National Bureau of Standards. It is one of three agencies that fall under the Technology Administration (www.technology. to providing calibration calibration /cal·i·bra·tion/ (kal?i-bra´shun) determination of the accuracy of an instrument, usually by measurement of its variation from a standard, to ascertain necessary correction factors. services at powers up to only 1 kW. Recently, however, a NIST scientist has developed, tested, and implemented the capability of performing off-site laser detector calibrations at powers up to 10 kW or more. Using a special transportable calibration system composed of various optical components, a characterized char·ac·ter·ize
tr.v. character·ized, character·iz·ing, character·iz·es
1. To describe the qualities or peculiarities of: characterized the warden as ruthless.
2. transfer standard, and a compact, stable water flow system, the customer's own high-power laser can be used as the radiation source for detector calibrations. In the first official use of this system, calibrations were performed for a U.S. manufacturer of high-power laser systems using their multi-kilowatt [CO.sub.2] laser source. This off-site measurement system significantly extend s the NIST high-power laser measurement capability and will allow better support to the laser-based materials processing industry without forcing NIST to spend large amounts of money purchasing the necessary lasers.
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