Photon has introduced the USBeamPro, a high dynamic beam profiler and dedicated software package with a USB 2.0 interface. This equipment provides a high level of portability for beam profiling, since a peripheral frame grabber card is not required for this system. Thus, this equipment can be easily transferred to different laptop or desktop computers without the additional step of installing a frame grabber card and the required software drivers into the computer. This innovation is highly desirable for beam profiling applications in field service, flexible manufacturing, and other activities where high portability is required.
The USBeamPro features a CMOS 2/3-inch format sensor, with a 1280 x 1024 active pixel imaging array of pixel dimensions 6.7µm x 6.7µm and an overall array size 8.6 x 6.9mm. Its small form factor of 54 x 54 x 33mm allows ease of placement into an optical path. The nominal dynamic range of this array is 30dB (10 bits of digitisation), although Photon has developed a data acquisition technique to obtain profiles with as a high as 48dB of dynamic range (>16 bits of digitisation). Achieving this dynamic range previously required more expensive silicon-based detector arrays. High dynamic range is important in many applications, especially lens characterisation, where lens aberrations are apparent from faint features around a strong central peak in the beam profile.