Characterization of laser droplet formation by reflected light

The subject of this experimental investigation is a novel laser droplet formation (LDF) process. During the LDF process, droplets are formed by melting the tip of a wire using a laser pulse. The goal of our research is to develop a non-contact method for characterization of the LDF process. For this purpose we employ the signals of the laser light that is reflected from the tip of the wire. The experiments were performed with nickel and tin-alloy wire. Results show that in-process characterization of various phases of the LDF process, like melting of the wire tip and formation of a molten pendant droplet is possible regardless of the wire material. In addition, a method for post-process detection of droplet detachment has been developed. Using the statistically defined threshold value, 99.2% and 97.8% detection reliability of droplet detachment was achieved in the case of nickel and tin-alloy wire, respectively.