Oxford Lasers

Flame penetration imaging can be used to take movies through flames, arcs and explosions. When an arc or laser welding process is imaged with a normal imaging system, the high brightness of the plasma saturates the camera and no detail can be seen. VisiWeld systems eliminate the glare to give a clear image of the weld process.

Sparkler without visibrite: Conventional high speed movie of firework. Flame is over-exposed (white) and unburned region is under-exposed (black)

Sparkler with VisiBrite: VisiBrite movie of same firework. Note that the flame has disappeared, and we can clearly see the melting process.

Applications

• Circuit breaker contact erosion
• Laser welding visualization
• Arc welding imaging
• Aero-engine blade breaks
• Metal arc spray viewing
• Explosions

How it works

The VisiBrite systems use lasers to illuminate the subject with high brightness, narrow bandwidth light. The imaging system's specially modified, digital high speed camera then only accepts the laser light and rejects the broad-band light emitted by the subject under study. This allows the camera to 'see' through plasmas, arcs, flames and explosions to record details of processes which would otherwise be totally obscured by the background light.

One important area of study is welding. The glare from an arc weld or the fireball of a laser welding process is impenetrable for most imaging systems. Derivatives of the VisiBrite range have been developed specifically for use in weld imaging. Specially selected and modified cameras and laser illuminators are combined to form extremely powerful VisiWeld, weld viewing systems, with frame rates from 60 fps to 1,000 fps. These powerful visualization tools enable flows within the weld pool to be studied.

Product selection matrix

For all systems listed below, laser exposure time is 30 ns or less, fast enough to freeze bullets in flight. Other configurations are available - for more information Contact Us, or see the detailed applications brief.