On-the-fly laser processing method with high efficiency for continuous large-scale trajectories

Laser processing with galvanometric scanners and servo platforms has been prosperous in the industry recently, and researches in this field have been evolved from step-and-scan methods to on-the-fly methods. However, the major on-the-fly methods only consider the high dynamic performance of the scanner and waste the characteristic of the scanner working area. This study proposes a new method that utilizes both above to improve efficiency conspicuously without loss of accuracy, aiming at continuous large-scale trajectories. In this method, the decomposed trajectories for the platform are derived from the target trajectories geometrically, and interpolation for the scanner trajectories is implemented through vector subtraction of positions. The experimental results with the given patterns indicate that the total processing time of the proposed method is shortened by 67.3% compared with the traditional step-and-scan method and 51.4% compared with the major on-the-fly method. Meanwhile, motion performance is better, fewer defects appear, and all detected errors satisfy the requirement. In conclusion, the proposed on-the-fly method combines efficiency and quality, thus perfectly suiting industrial laser processing applications.