Cleaning and maintenance of optical lenses in laser instruments

With the development of modern industry and the continuous progress of various technologies, we have become more and more demanding of laser technology. The field of laser application is expanding, and the demand for laser processing quality is higher and higher. This requires the laser to have a higher beam quality. The quality of laser beam depends not only on the components and media that produce the laser, but also the cleaning and maintenance of optical lens.

In the general power output laser, most of the lenses will be absorbed by the lens because of the manufacturing process or the external pollution. Used for a long time will shorten the life of the lens. Because of the damage of the optical lens, the use and even shutdown occur frequently. The increase of the absorption of laser wavelength by lens will lead to uneven heating, resulting in the reflection of lens. The refractive index changes, the laser wavelength will be reflected or transmitted from the high absorption lens when the laser power distribution is uneven. So that the lens center temperature is high, the edge temperature is reduced. This change is called the lens effect in optics.

Because of the pollution, the high absorption of lens and the effect of heating lens will cause many problems.The generation of irreversible thermal stress of lens substrate, the power loss caused by beam propagation through lens, the deflection of focus light spot and premature damage of coating layer can cause lens damage. For the exposure of the lens in the air, we often do not follow the requirements for lens cleaning and precautions when cleaning. Random selection of clean materials will cause new pollution or even scratch lenses. This will cause irreparable damage. So, according to years of experience, it's important to keep clean of any kind of optical lens. We should have good cleaning habits to carefully clean the lenses. This can reduce or eliminate the pollution caused by artificial causes such as fingerprints and saliva. As a common sense, when using hand to operate the optical system, we have to take medical gloves or fingerstall, whether cleaning, disassembly, installation. We must always follow the cleaning lens requirements and precautions. In the cleaning process, only the prescribed materials, such as optical paper, swab, reagent grade ethanol, can only be used.

For any lens of cleaning, dismantling and installation, shortcut will lead to shorten the life of the lens, and even permanent damage. So, we need to use common sense to prevent lens from other reasons, such as damp, smoke, dust and so on.When we are sure that one of the lenses is contaminated, we will blow the lens through the ear ball until the surface has no fine particles. Never blow with your mouth. Because the blown air is mostly oily, water and so on will further contaminate the lens. If there is still contamination on the surface after cleaning the ear ball, we must use a special cotton swab in the lab grade acetone, and the ethanol will be cleaned gently. This will remove most of the thin layer of pollution.

The pollution of the lens in the laser can cause serious collection errors to the laser output and even the data acquisition system. If we can keep the lens clean, it will extend the service life of the whole machine.By moving the lens ring Settings to the outer periphery of the lens surface, and the elastic pressing device to press the plate against the lens lenses and lens ring, and by way of filling the clean gas within the lens hood to prevent the lens film changes and the effect of the lens ring burns. At the same time it improves the cooling protective effect of the lens.