Calibration of Laser Optics for Sensor Guided Remote Cutting

In the last several years, laser based material processing has established itself in many industrial branches as an economical manufacturing process. Laser remote cutting in particular is widespread in the automotive sector. In order to take full advantage of laser remote cutting, it is necessary to position the laser beam precisely on the workpiece using a handling kinematic system. Therefore, this work focuses on the combination of standard industrial robots with laser scanner optics. To address this configuration, this paper proposes a method for the calibration of the parameters, which describe the precise position of the 3D laser scanner optics in respect to the robot. Moreover, the robot introduces a new source of deviation, which is then compensated by using an external measuring system to guide the scanner optics during processing.