Manufacturing & Supply Chain

At the Dublin National Manufacturing & Supply Chain Exhibition, Aerotech will be demonstrating how high-dynamic, high-throughput galvo scanning can be achieved: Booth 003 will feature a scanner system with gantry, IFOV and Aerotech’s latest Automation1 controller.

Around 140 exhibitors will come together at the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) Simmonscourt at the end of May to present their highlights from Industry 4.0, 3D printing, digital manufacturing, robotics and automation to sustainability, maintenance and asset management. In parallel, a specialist conference will cover red-hot topics around industrial manufacturing.

Aerotech, known as a specialist for motion control and positioning systems, will demonstrate live to trade visitors how industrial high-performance scanning works today. The focus will be on the IFOV controller (Infinite Field of View). According to Aerotech, this is a unique and industry-leading solution for synchronising linear or rotating servo axes with laser scanners.

In order to increase the throughput and quality of laser scanning, multi-scanner systems with IFOV controllers from Aerotech are used. These enable complex, large-area and highly dynamic laser processing between several axes and an extension of the field of view without the familiar stitching. The field-proven Infinite Field of View (IFOV) function helps improve structural accuracies and general error prevention. By synchronising linear or rotary servo axes with laser scanners, IFOV improves throughput, eliminates stitching and part quality problems caused by overlapping and mismatched laser processing.

“By optimally combining the highly dynamic capabilities of our galvo scanners with the travel range of the servo table, parts that are significantly larger than the conventional field of view of a scanner can be continuously machined without the need to merge individual work areas during scanning,” explains Simon Smith (pictured above), European Director Aerotech. He cites the production of OLED displays as a typical example.

One of the biggest challenges here is cutting out the individual displays from a much larger substrate. For this process step of micromachining, laser cutting has proven itself in practice. Since the laser spot size of galvanometer-based scanners is directly linked to the available working area, this poses a particular challenge: On the one hand, the speed of a galvo scanner is achieved, but on the other hand, the field of view is limited due to the laser spot size.

“With our unique IFOV controller, we have solved this problem. The resulting extension of the field of view and avoidance of stitching enables significantly higher scanning rates and thus an increase in productivity,” Simon Smith knows from practical applications.

More movement in the scanning process
Aerotech has just delivered the new release 2.4. of its control platform Automation1. The demo system consisting of galvo scanner, gantry and IFOV controller is controlled with Automation1. “New in our motion control is the availability of 3-axis PSO on the GL4 with IFOV (Infinite Field of View). In the course of this, we were able to improve the autofocusing once again and also support BiSS absolute encoders even more optimally now, which additionally increases the positioning accuracy,” Simon Smith emphasises.

Multi-scanner systems with IFOV controller (Infinitive Field of
View, i.e. opening angle) enable complex, large-area and highly dynamic
laser processing between several axes.