The service life of laser tube

Commonly known as laser tube in China, its full name is: glass sealed CO2 laser. This laser is commonly known as a laser tube because it is encapsulated by a glass tube.
Working principle: high voltage discharge excites high concentration CO2 gas to generate laser with wavelength of 10.6um
It mainly consists of hard glass, resonant cavity and electrode.
1. Hard glass part; This part consists of discharge tube, water cooling sleeve, gas storage sleeve and gas return pipe made of GG17 material. Enclosed CO2 laser is usually a three-layer casing structure. The innermost part is the discharge tube, the middle part is the water cleaning sleeve, the outermost layer is the gas storage sleeve, and the return pipe is used for connecting the discharge tube and the gas storage pipe.
2. Resonant cavity part: This part consists of total reflection mirror and output reflection mirror. The total reflection mirror of resonant cavity is usually based on optical glass, with gold-plated film on its surface. The reflectivity of the gold-coated mirror near 10.6um is above 98%. The output mirror of the resonant cavity is generally made of germanium ( Ge ), an infrared material that can transmit 10.6um radiation, as a substrate and coated with a multi-layer dielectric film.
3. Electrode part: CO2 laser generally uses cold cathode with cylindrical shape. The selection of cathode material has great influence on the life of laser. The basic requirements for cathode material are: low sputtering rate and low gas absorption rate.
The main specifications and models of laser tubes take laser power as the most important basis. Common laser tube types are 40w, 60w, 80w, 100w, 130w, 150w.
Laser tubes with different powers are mainly divided into different lengths. For example, the 60W laser tube is 1200mm or 1250mm, and the 80W length is 1600mm generally.
Laser tubes are mainly used for CO2 laser processing equipment. Such as laser engraving machine, laser cutting machine, laser marking machine, etc.

Regarding the life of the laser tube, take the 80mm diameter laser tube as an example. When the starting current is 6ma, the life can reach more than 10,000 hours, and when it is more than 6ma, the life will be shortened accordingly. In other words, the greater the current, the shorter the life span. In actual use and under standard working conditions, the service life is generally about 5000 hours. As a vulnerable part of laser machine, proper maintenance can also prolong its service life.