FPGA-based measurement of melt pool size in laser cladding systems

The laser cladding technique has been used for several years for applying different treatments to materials (e.g., coating, part reconstruction) or in rapid prototyping. However, practical applications suffer from problems related to the limited accuracy of the online measurements required to control the power applied through the laser beam. These problems are caused by inherent non-repetitiveness of the process, which is aggravated by the slow response of the PC-based systems used in industry for this kind of applications. In this paper, an FPGA-based system is proposed to overcome the speed limitations of PC-based implementations. Experimental results obtained in an industrial part reconstruction system are presented, demonstrating that the operation speed and the flexibility provided by FPGAs can be advantageously used to improve the performance of laser cladding systems.