Patent Application
20100078857
The present invention relates in general to laser marking systems. The invention relates in particular to laser marking systems wherein the marking laser is a diode-laser.
Laser marking systems are now in common use for marking materials such as metals, glass, wood, and plastic. Lasers used in such marking systems include diode-pumped solid-state lasers, fiber-lasers, and carbon dioxide (CO2) lasers. Typically a beam from whatever laser is used in the system is steered by a two-axis galvanometer and focused by f-theta optics onto a surface of an object being marked.
Special materials have been developed, and are commercially available, for accepting laser radiation to allow high-speed, high-volume, writing of labels with a laser marking system. One such material is “Laser Markable Label Material 7847” available from 3M Corporation of Minneapolis, Minn. This material is a three-layer polymer material having a white base film with a black surface coating to facilitate absorption of laser radiation. The white base film becomes exposed when the black material is ablated away by laser radiation. The base film is backed by an adhesive layer. A paper liner supports the laminate which can be peeled off when the label is to be applied to the product. The white material can be laser-cut to define the bounds of the label and allow such peeling. Other materials include black-anodized metal aluminum foil, organic materials used in electronics packaging and printed circuit boards, and white paper impregnated with a dye having an absorption band in the near infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum for absorbing NIR laser radiation. These materials are often supplied in tape form, so that large numbers of separate labels can be generated without having to reload material in the label maker, however these materials can also be supplied in individual sheets or the like.
Even the least expensive laser marking system designed for these label materials has a cost about two orders of magnitude greater than a computer peripheral paper-label printer such as an inkjet printer, which puts such a system beyond the means of the majority of smaller industrial or commercial users. This is somewhat unfortunate as such a system does not require periodic replacement of inkjet or toner cartridges and will function until the laser eventually fails which may only be after tens of thousands of hours of actual use. These materials also have significant advantages over inkjet printed labels in terms of ruggedness and durability. Accordingly, there is a need for a significant reduction in the cost of laser marking systems for label printing and the like.
The subject invention relates to an apparatus for marking an image on a laser responsive medium. In a preferred embodiment, the laser is a semiconductor laser which is intensity modulated. The output beam is focused onto the medium and raster scanned in a manner to create the image.
In a preferred embodiment, a scanning mirror and a focusing lens are mounted on a carriage which can be translated along a first axis with respect to the medium. The medium itself is translatable with respect to the carriage along a second axis, transverse to the first axis.
The laser can be mounted at a fixed position, separate from the carriage. An optical fiber can be provided for transporting the light from the laser to the scanning mirror.
In a preferred embodiment, the scanning mirror a torsionally resonant MEMS mirror which can operate at a plurality of different resonant frequencies. The operating frequency is selected to best match the scan speed of the mirror to the characteristics of the laser responsive medium.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of the specification, schematically illustrate a preferred embodiment of the present invention, and together with the general description given above and the detailed description of the preferred embodiment given below, serve to explain principles of the present invention.
Referring now to the drawings, wherein like components are designated by like reference numerals,
Emitter 14 emits a beam 18 diverging in the fast axis of the emitter at an angle of about 30° measured across the FWHM intensity points of the beam(see
Tape 26 to be marked is driven by a roller 40, which in turn is driven by a stepper motor 42 via a drive shaft 43 revolving in a direction indicated by arrow A. Tape 26 spans roller 40 and idler roller 48. Preferably, idler-rollers (not shown) are provided for keeping the tape in contact with rollers 40 and 48. A lens 24 for focusing the collimated beam is mounted on a platform or carriage 30. Carriage 30 is translatable back and forth in a direction (X) transverse to the direction (Y) in which the tape is driven by roller 40.
Collimated beam 18 is directed across the width of the tape onto mirror pair 56. The mirrors of mirror pair 56 are inclined at 45° to the beam direction and the mirrors are inclined at 90° to each other and act as a corner reflector in the plane of the drawing. The mirrors direct beam onto a mirror 58 mounted on carriage 30 at an angle of 45° to the direction of the incident beam. The beam is reflected from mirror 58 onto a one- axis scanning mirror 50. Scanning mirror 50 directs the beam to a focusing lens 24 that is arranged to focus the beam on the surface of tape 26. It should be noted, here that the projection optics arrangement of
Larger beams are less sensitive to variations in path length. By way of example, for a beam with diameter of 5.0 millimeters (mm) at wavelength around 1.0 micrometers (μm) and a lens focal distance of about 25.0 mm, the focal plane of the lens shifts less than 10.0 μm as the path length varies from 150.0 mm to 350.0 mm. The beam diameter varies by less than a percent. These variations are within usual mechanical tolerances for printer mechanisms.
A drive motor 36 is mounted via a bracket 39 on carriage 30 and is connected to mirror 50 via a drive shaft. Mirror 50 is rotated reciprocally, i.e., oscillated, by motor 36 about an axis 35, parallel to the translation direction of the carriage, i.e., perpendicular to the length direction of the tape, as indicated in
Means for traversing carriage 30 are not shown in
Continuing with reference to
Referring in particular to
To be most efficient, each swing of the mirror 50 should cover at least ten rows and more preferably at least forty rows of pixels. Because the carriage is moving in the X direction as the mirror is rotating, the scanning path of the beam spot will not be exactly perpendicular to the Y axis but will extend at as small angle thereto. This slight deviation in the scan direction axis should be taken into consideration when controlling the modulation of the laser.
After the full width of the tape is scanned, the carriage will return in the X direction to the opposite side of the tape. Then the tape will be advanced a distance W, and another N rows of the bitmap image are printed in another X-direction traverse of carriage 30.
While it is possible to print all pixels the same size, with adjacent pixels representing a dark area, preferably the laser will be turned on where a dark line is to begin and turned off at the end of that line. By way of example
In a calculated example of apparatus 10 it was assumed that tape 26 was the 7847 tape discussed above, and that emitter 14 emitted between about 5.0 and 10.0 Watts (W) in a beam 18 having a fast-axis divergence (at FWHM) of about 29°. It was determined experimentally that that maximum linear marking speed was about 500 millimeters per second (mm/sec). Collimating lens 22 and focusing lens 24 were assumed to be an aspheric lens-pair available as part number AL3026 available from Thorlabs Inc., of Newton, N.J.
The focused beam, i.e., pixels 62, had dimensions of between about 10 μm and 20 μm by about 90 μm, generally, but not exactly, corresponding to the dimensions of the emitting area (facet) of the diode-laser. Width W was assumed to be sufficient that between about forty and sixty rows of a bit-map image could be printed in a single traverse of carriage 30. The distance P between print-direction sweeps of focused beam 18 (exaggerated in
A stable laser-resonator is formed between mirror-structure 78 and a concave out-coupling mirror 82 from which a beam 18A is delivered. Output beam 18A is modulated, for above-described printing, by modulating a diode-laser source (not explicitly shown) that delivers pump radiation to gain-structure 76.
Unlike the poor-quality astigmatic-beam, having different fast-axis and slow-axis divergence, delivered by a diode-laser, beam 18A has the same divergence in each transverse axis and can have a very high beam quality, for example M2 as low as about 1.1. Further detailed description of an OPS-laser is not necessary for understanding principles of the present invention, and, accordingly, such a detailed description is not presented herein. A detailed description of OPS-lasers is provided in U.S. Pat. No. 6,087,742, assigned to the assignee of the present invention, and the complete disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
The high quality of output beam 18A of OPS-laser 72 allows the beam to be highly collimated by relatively simple collimating optics. In apparatus 70 beam 18A is collimated by a lens 84. One suitable lens from collimating the beam is available as part number LBF254-150 from Thorlabs of Newton, N.J. A highly collimated beam provides that the beam can be delivered directly to mirror 58. The beam can be focused to a circular spot having a diameter of between about 5.0 μm to 10.0 μm or larger.
The choice of beam diameter depends on the medium that is to be printed and the power in the beam. For any given power, a smaller spot allows media with higher melting/ablation intensity threshold, such as metals to be marked. A smaller spot, however, results in a smaller row width and correspondingly smaller spacing between rows. The smaller the line spacing, however, the longer the marking time will be. For low melting point materials such as plastics the focal point can be intentionally positioned above or below the surface to increase the size of the spot on the surface to beyond the focal-spot size.
Resuming here a discussion of printing schemes, in
When MEMS 92 is activated, mirror 50A scans about rotation-axis 35 as indicated in
In order to create a torsionally resonant structure that oscillates approximately as a triangular wave, two different masses, are arranged on a common torsional axis. One of these masses is the mirror structure including mirror 50A and a support platform 102 therefor. The other mass (counter mass) is inner frame 94. The masses are supported on a common torsion beam (spring) 98. In this example, portions 98A of beam 98, connecting inner frame 94 to outer frame 96 have a stiffness different from that of portions 98B of the beam connecting the mirror structure to inner frame 94. Rotation axis 35 extends through the center of the beam.
By selecting an appropriate stiffness for portions 98A and 98B of beam 98, MEMS 92 can be made torsionally resonant simultaneously at two different frequencies with one frequency about three-times higher than the other, i.e., effectively at fundamental and third-harmonic (3H) frequencies. If the MEMS is excited at only the fundamental frequency the mirror structure and counter-mass torsionally (angularly) oscillate in the same direction about axis 35, with the mirror structure having a slightly larger angular excursion at the extremity than that of counter mass. If the MEMS is excited at only the 3H-frequency the mirror structure and counter-mass angularly oscillate about axis 35 in opposite directions.
The basic structure comprises one or more sheet metal parts laminated together. The parts are made preferably by photo-etching or laser-cutting a sheet metal material such as stainless steel or beryllium copper. Torsional resonances are excited by four piezoelectric transducer (PZT) drive-elements 104A-D, each thereof bonded to a similarly-sized tongue portion 106 of outer frame 96.
Mirror 50A is preferably made from silicon coated with a high reflectance coating. Platform 102 supporting the mirror is attached at the center of beam 98 (torsional axis 35), with the additional mass (counter-mass) of frame 94 being attached at an intermediate location along the beam or torsional axis as depicted in
It is emphasized here that in a resonant MEMS device, the fundamental and higher order resonant modes (frequencies) are not naturally harmonically-related as would be the case with a long, vibrating wire such a guitar string. The MEMS structure must be specifically designed such that the modes are harmonically related.
For convenience of fabricating MEMS 92, it is preferable to choose the thickness of all portions of beam 98, the thickness of a metal layer under the mirror (between the mirror and platform 10), the thickness of tongues 106 supporting the PZT-elements; and the thickness of frame 96 to be the same. This provides that these parts can easily be etched as a single unit from a single sheet of metal. Note that fame 96 in practice is bonded to a rigid frame such as frame 100 in the apparatus of
To increase the mass of the mirror structure and the counter-mass structure, additional sheets can be added as depicted in
As noted above design of MEMS 92 is arranged to cause mirror 50A to scan in a “triangle-wave” fashion. Such a triangle wave can be represented as Fourier series of sine-waves of the form:
f(x)=Sin(x)−Sin(3x)/9+Sin(5x)/25 (1)
which is an infinite series with increasing higher odd-harmonic frequencies having increasingly lower coefficients (each coefficient being the reciprocal of the square of the harmonic). While ten or more terms are required to provide a close approximation to a triangle-wave, it has been found that a reasonable approximation can be achieved with only two (the fundamental and third-harmonic) terms.
Set forth below is a discussion of results of testing an actual MEMS scanner constructed according to the configuration of
The measured frequency-response of the experimental stainless-steel scanner is schematically depicted in the graph of
Electrical connections to the experimental MEMS scanner are as follows. The PZT elements are connected as pairs with one pair being PZT 104A and PZT 104B (see
When voltage is applied to the PZT elements, the poling on the piezoelectric material is such that the elements tend to expand or contract along the long-axis of the element, i.e., perpendicular to beam 98. As they are attached to a metal substrate (tongue 106 in
Changes in resonant frequency of this device are dominated by the change in modulus of the metal used for torsion beam 98. For the above described experimental MEMS scanner made in 17-7 Ph stainless-steel, the fundamental frequency is found to change about 0.5% from 20 C to 50 C, and the frequency ratio of the resonances is found to change from 2.9966 to 2.9985 over the same range. As the device temperature changes, it will be necessary to adjust the amplitude and relative phase of the AC drive signals to maintain the desired mechanical motion of the mirror. This will preferably be controlled by optically monitoring the position of the mirror, for example, by using an optical beam reflected from the mirror and a 1D position sensitive detector to sense the position of the reflected beam and thus infer the angular motion of the mirror.
Such an arrangement was used in a set of experiments to measure the mirror motion. An example trace of the mirror motion with the superimposed AC drive signals adjusted to produce a triangle wave approximation is depicted in
It should be noted here that the inventive MEMS scanner is not limited to scanning in approximation of a triangle wave. In the exemplary scanner described above, without any mechanical modification, if the phase of the 3H drive-signal component is adjusted such that the 3H component adds rather than subtracts, scanning may be accomplished in an approximation of a “square-wave”. In a scanner designed to have resonances at fundamental, second-harmonic, and third-harmonic frequencies scanning may be accomplished in an approximation of saw-tooth wave fashion using a drive signal of the form:
Sin(x)+Sin(2x)/2+Sin(3x)/3 (2)
In all of the laser-marking devices described above, an oscillating mirror mounted on a carriage is used to scan the focus of a modulated laser beam reciprocally over laser-responsive print medium in one direction while the carriage is being traversed over the medium in a direction at 90° to the scan direction. Modulation of the laser beam is arranged such that a plurality of rows of a bit-map image are printed (marked) on the medium in one traverse of the carriage. The medium is then advanced and the carriage traversed to print a next plurality of rows of the image, and so on.
In apparatus in accordance with the present invention described above. Relative motion in X- and Y-axes is effected by translating a carriage over the medium in the X-direction to mark one set of rows of an image, then incrementally moving the medium using a roller drive arrangement prior to writing another set of rows. In any of the embodiments it is possible to maintain the carriage in a fixed position while translating the medium with respect to the carriage on an X-Y stage. One such embodiment 120 is depicted in
Apparatus 120 is similar to apparatus 90 of
In any of the above described embodiments of apparatus wherein a modulated focused laser beam is raster-scanned over a recording medium to form an image therein, there will be an optimum scan-speed dependent on the power in the beam and characteristics of the medium. If in an apparatus it is desired to accommodate media having characteristics sufficiently different that the optimum scan speeds for the media are sufficiently different, the apparatus can be designed such that scanning carriages can be made as interchangeable modules, with each module optimized for a particular one of the different media.
Alternatively, in apparatus using a resonant MEMS scanner as in the apparatus of
If the “fundamental” MEMS scan frequency is changed, the carriage speed should be adjusted so that the carriage traverses about one beam width in the time that it takes to make one scan. Certain laser label materials change color without physically ablating, so less power is needed. Accordingly, the scan amplitude and frequency can be increased, or the power decreased.
Those skilled in the art will recognize that in any of the embodiments described above means may be provided for monitoring the position of the scanned beam or detecting fiducial marks pre-printed on the medium to aid in accurately “stitching” the pluralities of rows together to form the final image. Such methods may be used with the above-described or any other embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention.
In summary, the present invention is described above in terms of a preferred and other embodiments. The invention is not limited, however, to the embodiments described and depicted. Rather, the invention is limited only by the claims appended hereto.
This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/240,126, filed Sep. 29, 2008, the complete disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 12240126 | Sep 2008 | US |
| Child | 12539985 | US |
