Polyscience's Temperature Control for CO₂ Laser Systems

PolyScience 6000 Series of Portable Chillers offer stable and reliable cooling for any applications where heat needs to be removed from a system, and their portable, compact design gives them a flexibility to be used with a range of laser systems. Significantly, they can operate at ambient temperatures as high as 35°C.

There are many different types of laser system, and many different applications they can be used in, with carbon dioxide (CO₂) lasers being one of the most useful lasers currently used. CO₂ lasers produce beams of infrared light from a gas mixture, which contains mainly CO₂, helium and nitrogen.

The chiller comes with the choice of three different pumps: turbine pump, positive displacement pump and centrifugal pump. The first two have cooling capacities of 700-2900 watts, that is, they can remove from 700-2900 W of heat from the system; while the centrifugal pump has a cooling capacity of 800-2900 W.

Laser systems are also popular for medical applications because water - which makes up a substantial proportion of biological tissue - absorbs the laser’s infrared radiation well. They can be used in a similar fashion to a surgical scalpel to cut and remove soft tissue, such as nodules on vocal cords or warts. Other applications include skin resurfacing, which involves ‘vaporising’ to promote collagen formation (otherwise known as a facelift); and more recently, ‘welding’ human tissue in place of sutures. Lasers have certain advantages including: less bleeding, shorter surgery time, less risk of infection, and less swelling after the operation.

The best pump for a chiller depends on the laser system’s required coolant flow rate (measured in litres/min) and pressure (measured in bars). And this depends on the application of the laser system.

Turbine Pumps provide moderate flow and moderate pressures which makes them well-suited to applications that require higher pressure or experience a higher system pressure drop, such as long tubing runs or pumping vertically. A robust design makes turbine pumps very reliable and forgiving to impurities in the fluid stream. Bronze turbine pumps are standard; stainless steel pumps are available.

Positive Displacement Pumps have performance characteristics similar to turbine pumps and are suitable for pumping higher or further from the cooling product and the application. They produce moderate flow at high pressure. Brass positive displacement pumps are standard; stainless steel positive displacement pumps are available.

Centrifugal Pumps offer higher relative flow rates at lower pressures and are suitable for applications that are in close proximity to the chiller or require lower pressure, such as glass condensers. Centrifugal pumps are very quiet and require little maintenance, but they are more sensitive to pressure drops.

Recirculating water chillers are an effective method for cooling laser systems for a range of applications, from biological and surgical applications to industrial laser cutting and welding.

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