Utilisation of Thermal Radiation for Process Monitoring

Particularly the automation of thermal material processing makes high demands on monitoring and controlling the resulting quality. A new promising approach is the utilisation of the emitted thermal radiation to get detailed information about temperature distributions and geometrical structures. Indeed, current laser systems with strong focusability exhibit a high innovation potential in many application ranges, for example the possibility of adjusting the welding depth to even small material thicknesses. However, the usability of these advantages is limited because the suitable process windows are considerably constricted at increased welding speed. Therefore, a reliable monitoring of thermal material processing is of vital importance.