What are Alignment Lasers?
An alignment laser is a type of laser that is specially designed to perform industrial alignment tasks. These are visible lasers that provides a low or moderate output power and has high laser beam quality. Alignment lasers usually operate at a wavelength from 405 nm to 670 nm with an output power of up to 100 mW. They produces different beam shapes such as a single spot, straight line, two perpendicular lines or a circle. An alignment laser is usually an RGB laser, spot laser, line laser, cross laser, or vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL).
Alignment lasers are used in a wide range of industries where alligment is important. For example, misalignment of industrial machinery leads to issues such as the vibration, looseness of foundation bolts and base-plates, and poor performance. Proper alignment is necessary for industrial machinery to function. The alignment lasers are also used in shaft alignment, machine alignment, and belt and pulley alignment. Other industries where these are used, include aerospace & defense, scientific, test & measurement, and instrumentation applications.
The alignment lasers are also available in the infrared wavelength region and are used with night vision devices by the military for aligning the laser resonators.
Machine shaft alignment application
Specifications details of alignment lasers:
Wavelength: It represents the wavelength of the laser beam. The beam of the Alignment laser usually needs to be visible so they operate in the visible spectrum from 405 nm to 670 nm. There are cases where IR wavelength alignment lasers.
Mode: It represents the mode of operation of laser light. It can be single-mode or multi-mode.
Operation Mode: It represents the output power operation mode. These lasers are available both in continuous wave (CW) and pulsed mode operation. Usually alignment lasers are CW lasers.
Laser Color: It represents the laser color of the alignment lasers. Can be red, green, violet , blue or another color.
Beam Shape: It represents the shape of a laser beam. Different shapes of laser beam output are produced such as a single spot, straight line, two perpendicular lines, and circular.
Beam Diameter: It represents the beam diameter of the alignment laser and is usually expressed in mm.
Beam Divergence: It represents the divergence of the laser beam and is represented in milliradian (mrad).
GoPhotonics has listed Alignment lasers from the leading laser manufacturers and made them searchable by specification. Narrow down on alignment lasers by Wavelength, Color, Beam Shape and other relevant parameters.