CN111624914B

CN111624914B - Controller connection structure and fiber laser

Info

Publication number: CN111624914B
Application number: CN202010461460.XA
Authority: CN
Inventors: 曹柏林
Original assignee: Bwt Tianjin Ltd
Current assignee: Bwt Tianjin Ltd
Priority date: 2019-07-22
Filing date: 2020-05-27
Publication date: 2023-06-27
Anticipated expiration: 2040-05-27
Also published as: CN110442052A; CN111624914A

Abstract

The invention discloses a controller connection structure and an optical fiber laser. The controller connection structure comprises a main controller and a plurality of sub-controllers, wherein the sub-controllers are connected with each other, and the main controller is connected with the sub-controllers through only one cable. The controller connection structure does not need to change the hardware structure of the interface of the main controller when the number of the sub controllers is increased, and has good expansibility; all the sub-controllers are mutually connected and communicated, and the state change or fault response of the system is rapid; and the connecting structure is simple, and the electromagnetic interference resistance is strong.

Description

Controller connection structure and fiber laser

Technical Field

The invention relates to the field of controllers, in particular to a controller connection structure which is used for but not limited to the expandability connection between controllers in a fiber laser. The invention also relates to a fiber laser.

Background

In the field of fiber lasers, a fiber combiner is typically used to combine laser beams output by multiple laser modules together to form a higher power fiber laser. Each laser module is actually a single-cavity fiber laser, and each laser module needs a set of electric control subsystems including power supply, control, detection, driving and the like except for a light path, and the core of each laser module is a sub-controller; the whole fiber laser comprises a central centralized controller for controlling the sub-controllers, namely a main controller, wherein the main controller and the sub-controllers mainly comprise a high-speed FPGA and a low-speed microprocessor respectively. Various communication signals, enabling signals sent by a user upper computer or a cutting machine, pulse modulation signals, red light alignment guide signals, real-time fault processing signals, electric power conduction and the like need to be transmitted between the main controller and the sub-controllers, so that the connection structure between the main controller and the sub-controllers is very complex. Particularly, as the total laser output power is increasingly demanded, the number of single-cavity laser modules is correspondingly increased, that is, the number of sub-controllers is increased, the original main controller has to be redesigned, the number of interfaces of the sub-controllers is expanded, the number of connecting wires between the main controller and the plurality of sub-controllers is too many and complex, the wiring is time-consuming and easy to make mistakes, and electromagnetic interference is generated between connecting wires, so that the connection cannot be realized or the technical requirements cannot be met although the connection is realized, the development cost, the material cost and the installation cost are all high, and the development period is long.

Fig. 1 shows a schematic diagram of a fiber laser controller in the prior art, and this connection structure has no expansibility, since the main controller needs to be redesigned every time one laser module is added, that is, one sub-controller is added, in addition to the electromagnetic interference caused by the line load.

Therefore, electromagnetic interference generated in the connection of the main controller and the sub-controller and the interface of the main controller cannot be expanded to be a technical problem in the current controller connection structure.

Disclosure of Invention

The present invention has been made in view of the above problems, and has as its object to provide a controller connection structure and a fiber laser that solve the above problems.

In order to achieve the above purpose, the technical scheme of the invention is realized as follows:

the invention provides a controller connection structure, which comprises a main controller and a plurality of sub-controllers, wherein the sub-controllers are connected through a single cable, and the sub-controllers are connected in parallel; and the connection is a bus connection, signals in the bus connection being transmitted in differential form.

Optionally, the cable is a flat wire, a plurality of D-sub connectors are crimped on the flat wire, and the number of the D-sub connectors is equal to the sum of the number of the main controller and the number of the sub controllers, and the polarities of the D-sub connectors are opposite.

Optionally, the flat wire comprises at least one of a power line, a communication line, a control line, a status line, a data line, and an address line.

Optionally, the controller connection structure adopts an RS-485 communication protocol.

In another aspect, the present invention provides a fiber laser, where the fiber laser includes a plurality of laser modules, each of the laser modules includes a single-cavity fiber laser, and the fiber laser further includes a controller connection structure according to any one of the above, and each of the sub-controllers is respectively disposed in one of the laser modules.

Optionally, a fault cascade unit, a high-speed protection unit and a control unit are arranged in the main controller and each sub-controller, and the fault cascade unit is used for transmitting fault signals among the high-speed protection unit, the control unit and other controllers; the high-speed protection unit is used for collecting photoelectric signals to generate fault signals and transmitting the fault signals to the control unit or the fault cascade unit; the control unit is used for realizing the processing and control of fault signals.

Optionally, the fault cascade unit comprises a number of ADM series transceivers.

Optionally, a plurality of wires are arranged in the cable and used for transmitting fault alarm signals, so that the speed of the fiber laser for coping with faults is improved.

Optionally, the high-speed protection unit includes: the optical fiber laser comprises a photoelectric detector, an optical signal comparator, a high-speed protection controller and a digital-to-analog converter, wherein the photoelectric detector is arranged on an optical path of the optical fiber laser and used for detecting the light leakage size of an optical fiber cladding, the optical signal comparator is used for comparing a detection signal of the photoelectric detector with a light leakage reference signal, the high-speed protection controller is used for closing a pumping source driver according to an output result of the optical signal comparator, and the digital-to-analog converter is used for providing the light leakage reference signal for the optical signal comparator.

Optionally, the high-speed protection controller comprises a discrete flip-flop or a field programmable gate array.

The controller connection structure of the invention has the following advantages:

according to the controller connection structure disclosed by the invention, as the main controller is connected with each sub-controller through a single cable, the number of the sub-controllers is increased without changing the hardware structure of the main controller, and the expandability is good; secondly, as the sub-controllers are organically connected together, communication can be carried out between the sub-controllers, and each sub-controller can respond quickly to the state change of other sub-controllers; again, since the connection lines are few and short, the connection lines are reduced from external disturbances and from disturbances between the connection lines.

According to the fiber laser disclosed by the invention, as the fault cascade processing mechanism is adopted in each controller, fault signals can be effectively transmitted among the controllers, the coping capacity of the fiber laser to faults is enhanced, and the overall safety is improved.

The foregoing description is only an overview of the present invention, and is intended to be implemented in accordance with the teachings of the present invention in order that the same may be more clearly understood and to make the same and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention more readily apparent.

Drawings

Various other advantages and benefits will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon reading the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments. The drawings are only for purposes of illustrating the preferred embodiments and are not to be construed as limiting the invention. Also, like reference numerals are used to designate like parts throughout the figures. In the drawings:

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a prior art connection structure of a fiber laser multi-level controller;

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of the connection structure of a multi-stage controller in one embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 3 is a physical diagram of the connection structure of the multi-level controller in one embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of a high-power fiber laser based on a beam combining structure according to one embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of a fault cascade processing apparatus in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;

fig. 6 is a schematic diagram of the structure of a high-speed protection unit and a control unit (microcontroller) in one embodiment of the invention.

Detailed Description

Exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure will be described in more detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. While exemplary embodiments of the present disclosure are shown in the drawings, it should be understood that the present disclosure may be embodied in various forms and should not be limited to the embodiments set forth herein. Rather, these embodiments are provided so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete, and will fully convey the scope of the disclosure to those skilled in the art.

Example 1

In order to solve the problem of connection between a main controller and a plurality of sub-controllers in the existing fiber laser, the invention provides a structure capable of realizing connection between various main controllers and the plurality of sub-controllers, wherein the plurality of sub-controllers in the connection structure are connected with each other, and then, the main controller is connected with a single cable between the plurality of sub-controllers. The controller connection structure can be used in any technical field. The selection of the model of the controller, the structure of the connecting wire, the transmitted signals and the adopted communication protocol are not limited.

Fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of a controller connection structure in an embodiment of the present invention. The controller connection structure includes: the system comprises a main controller and a plurality of sub-controllers, wherein the sub-controllers are connected with each other, and the sub-controllers can be connected with each other through single cables, such as being physically connected with each other in parallel; or one of the sub-controllers is connected with a plurality of the sub-controllers, and the other sub-controllers can be connected with each other, and the connecting wire between the sub-controllers is also the single cable for realizing the effective connection between the sub-controllers. In this way, the sub-controllers are organically connected together, and can communicate with each other, and each sub-controller rapidly responds to the state change of the other sub-controllers.

In addition, in order to ensure that the hardware structure of the interface of the main controller is unchanged and increase the expansibility of the control structure, for example, in a specific embodiment, the main controller is connected to one sub-controller designated by the target address in the main controller through a cable connection wire in an address selection manner, the sub-controllers and the main controller can also communicate in the address selection manner, and the main controller or each sub-controller can also broadcast to the rest of the control in a broadcast manner. In this embodiment, the interface shape of the connection line and the adopted standard are not limited, and corresponding designs can be performed according to different controller types and actual requirements of connection. The design includes a mechanism for preventing bus contention, that is, only one controller (whether the main controller or the sub-controller) transmits to the bus at each moment, and when other controllers detect that the bus is being transmitted by a certain controller, the controllers wait until the controller transmits, and then queue sequentially.

The arrangement of the controller connection structure has the greatest advantages that more sub-controllers can be connected in an expanding way on the premise of not redesigning the main controller as only one control bus is connected with the main controller and all the sub-controllers, and the structure has simple and compact wire arrangement and leaves more space for other parts of the whole machine, so that the mechanical design of the whole machine is flexible and convenient; the wiring is simple and few, and the cost of manpower and materials is low; the system and the submodule are simple and convenient to test and maintain.

In summary, according to the above technical solution in the present embodiment, first, since the main controller and each sub-controller are connected by a single cable, increasing the number of sub-controllers does not need to change the hardware structure of the main controller, and thus the expandability is good; secondly, as the sub-controllers are organically connected together, communication can be carried out between the sub-controllers, and each sub-controller can respond quickly to the state change of other sub-controllers; again, since the connection lines are few and short, the connection lines are reduced from external disturbances and from disturbances between the connection lines.

Further, in order to achieve the purpose of the present invention, several sub-controllers are connected in parallel through a single cable, and then the main controller is connected to any point on the parallel line through a single cable, for example, a connection line led out from the main controller may be connected to a connection node of a certain sub-controller in the middle of the parallel line, or may be connected to a sub-controller at the head end or the tail end of the arrangement, as shown in fig. 4. Further, since the connection lines are few and short, the connection lines are subject to external interference and interference between the connection lines is small.

Further, the connection is a bus connection. Bus connection is an important connection mode in the field of computers or communication, and a Bus (Bus) is a public communication trunk line for transmitting information between various functional components of a computer, and external equipment is connected with the Bus through a corresponding interface circuit. The bus is a transmission wire harness composed of wires, and the bus is used for transmitting information according to the type of the computer.

The signals in the bus structure are transmitted in differential form. The input and output signals are transmitted in a differential mode, and the common mode rejection ratio of noise is high, so that the system has high anti-interference capability.

Preferably, flat wires are selected as DB buses, in particular embodiments, the type of DB bus may be selected to include any of DB9, DB25, DB 37. For example, the DB25 bus is selected, so that the manufacturing is simple and convenient, and the cost is low. The number of lines in the DB bus is not limited to 9, 25, 37, but the specific number depends on the application requirements.

In one or some embodiments, a plurality of D-sub connectors, which may be abbreviated as D-sub, are crimped onto the flat wire of the DB bus, which is a common serial communication connector. The D-subunit connectors are connected with DB pairs on the main control circuit board and the sub control circuit boards, the number of the connectors on the flat wire is the sum of the number of the main control board and the sub control board, and the polarity of the connectors on the flat wire is opposite to the polarity of the main control board and the sub control board.

And in order to realize the conduction of the power supply, the connection of the power supply among the controllers is convenient, and a power line and/or an address line/a control line can be arranged inside the flat wire. Thus, in one embodiment, the flat wire includes at least one of a power line, a communication line, a control line, a status line, a data line, and an address line.

Preferably, the flat wire includes a unique pair of dedicated fast fault alarm differential lines inside, such as the wire 3 and the wire 15 may be used as the alarm differential lines described above, although the present invention is not limited to the above-described configuration.

The existing bus structure can be improved according to actual needs, for example, the DB25 bus is improved, and the controller connection structure can be applied to a fiber laser.

In a specific embodiment, the communication protocol adopted in the controller connection structure is RS-485, so that effective transmission of various communication signals, enabling signals sent by a user's host computer or a cutting machine, pulse modulation signals, red light alignment guide signals, real-time fault processing signals and power supply signals can be realized.

Referring to fig. 3, there is shown a physical diagram of a connection structure of a multi-level controller according to another embodiment of the present invention, in which parallel connection of six sub-controllers is shown, and a main controller is connected to the right end of a flat cable, which is not shown in the drawing.

Example 2

Fig. 4 is a schematic structural diagram of a high-power fiber laser based on a beam combining structure according to an embodiment of the present invention. The fiber laser comprises a plurality of laser modules, wherein the fiber laser comprises a plurality of laser modules, each laser module comprises a single-cavity fiber laser, and the fiber laser further comprises a controller connecting structure according to any one of the above, wherein the sub-controllers are arranged in the laser modules.

In a specific embodiment, the main controller performs connection control on a plurality of laser modules, and each laser module further comprises a single-cavity fiber laser and a sub-controller. The meaning of the english word in fig. 4 is as follows:

CPS-Cladding Power Stripper, cladding power stripper.

QBH-Quartz Block Head, namely an optical fiber output device, is a device for expanding and outputting optical fiber light spots and reducing power density by sealing an optical fiber welded quartz column and a mechanical part, is used for medium-high power continuous light and light beam divergence output, and is commonly used for metal cutting or welding processing.

PD-Photo Diode or Photo Detector, i.e. photodiode.

In one embodiment, FIG. 5 shows a schematic diagram of a processor in one embodiment of the invention, the main controller and sub-controllers including a fault cascade unit, a high-speed protection unit, and a control unit. The fault cascade unit can receive fault signals from the high-speed protection unit or other controllers in the controller and transmit the processed signals to the control unit and other controllers; the high-speed protection unit is used for collecting photoelectric signals to generate fault signals and transmitting the fault signals to the control unit or the fault cascading unit, and the control unit is used for processing and controlling the fault signals.

In particular, the faulty cascode unit has several ADM series transceivers that are connected in series-parallel or that operate individually. The ADM family of transceivers are transceivers for the RS-485 protocol interface, and are capable of delivering both differential and single-ended signals, such as the ADM306X system, and the like. Preferably, the fault cascade unit includes 3 ADMs 3066, with the exception that one of them is used to effect differential to single-ended and single-ended to differential conversion of the fault signal, leaving 2 ADMs 3066 to effect differential to single-ended conversion of the enable signal and the modulation signal, respectively.

Specifically, the fault cascade unit may receive fault signals sent by the sub-controllers or the main controller of other laser modules, and transmit the fault signals to the high-speed protection unit of the sub-controller of the present laser module, where the high-speed protection unit determines whether to alarm or close the present laser module; on the other hand, the fault cascade unit in the sub-controller of the laser module can also transmit the fault condition of the laser module to the sub-controller or the main controller in other laser modules, and transmit the processed processing signals to other controllers and the high-speed protection unit in the controller.

It is worth emphasizing that two special wires in the DB25 cable directly transmit deadly fault alarm signals, and after the fault cascade units of other sub-modules and the main module receive the deadly alarms, the signals are immediately converted into signals which can be received by the high-speed protection unit, and the high-speed protection unit immediately responds and starts protection after receiving the signals. In contrast, when the RS-485 communication protocol is fully used to transmit these signals, many other signals are simultaneously transmitted on the same RS-485 communication line, the response time to the fault signals is greatly prolonged, and the processing speed of these signals by the microprocessor software is slow, which causes the failure to transmit and process these fatal fault alarm signals in time. The special wire and special high-speed hardware are used for fault receiving and processing, but only the hardware part of the RS-485 protocol is adopted, so that the speed is increased by hundreds of times, and the purpose of protecting the laser can be achieved by timely responding and processing the fatal faults.

The high-speed protection unit may adopt the technical solution disclosed in patent ZL201821623521.2 of the inventor, and fig. 6 is a schematic structural diagram of the high-speed protection unit and the control unit (microcontroller) in one embodiment of the present invention. The microcontroller of fig. 6 may be used as a control unit in the present invention, while the other circuit parts are high-speed protection units in the present invention.

The high-speed protection unit includes: the optical signal comparator is used for comparing the detection signal of the optical detector with the light leakage reference signal, and closing the high-speed protection controller of the pumping source driver according to the output result of the optical signal comparator, the digital-analog converter for providing the light leakage reference signal for the optical signal comparator and the microprocessor connected with the high-speed protection controller and the digital-analog converter.

Further, the photodetector comprises one or more of the following: a first photodetector disposed at the front side of the wavelength division multiplexer, a second photodetector disposed at the rear side of the grating after the active optical fiber, a third photodetector disposed at the cladding power stripper, and a fourth photodetector disposed at the front side of the optical fiber output element.

Further, the fiber laser protection circuit further includes: and a detection amplifying circuit arranged between the photoelectric detector and the optical signal comparator.

Further, the microprocessor receives the laser fault alarm signal sent by the high-speed protection controller through an alarm signal line, and controls the high-speed protection controller through one or more of an internal enabling line, a reset line, an alarm clearing line, a photoelectric detector alarm shielding line and an internal modulation signal line.

Further, two optical signal comparators are respectively arranged corresponding to each of the photodetectors to respectively compare the detection signals of the photodetectors with an upper threshold and a lower threshold of the light leakage reference signal.

Further, the high-speed protection controller is provided with an input interface for receiving one or more of an external enable signal, an interlock signal, an external scram signal, and an external modulation signal.

Further, the fiber laser protection circuit further includes: a power comparator for comparing the power set point and the power reference value; the high-speed protection controller is connected with the power comparator to close the pump source driver according to the output result of the power comparator.

Further, the digital-to-analog converter is connected with the power comparator to provide the power reference value for the power comparator.

Further, the optical signal comparator and the power comparator are hysteresis comparators.

Further, the high-speed protection controller comprises a discrete flip-flop or a field programmable gate array.

See patent ZL201821623521.2 for specific solutions.

In summary, when a plurality of sub-laser modules and a main module are connected together, the optical fiber laser disclosed in this embodiment of the present invention affects each module, and when one module or a plurality of modules fail, not only those modules that fail but also other modules are considered to be protected. This failure is cascade, handled, protected in multiple stages so as to protect the entire laser. Therefore, in this embodiment, a fault cascade processing unit and a high-speed protection unit are designed in each processor, thereby realizing a cascade fault processing and an appliance protection.

The foregoing is merely illustrative of the present invention, and the present invention is not limited thereto, and any person skilled in the art will readily recognize that variations or substitutions are within the scope of the present invention. Therefore, the protection scope of the present invention shall be subject to the protection scope of the claims.

Claims

1. The controller connection structure is applied to the fiber laser and comprises a main controller and a plurality of sub-controllers, and is characterized in that the sub-controllers are connected through a single cable and are connected in parallel; and the connection is a bus connection, signals in the bus connection being transmitted in differential form,

the fault cascade unit is used for transmitting fault signals among the high-speed protection unit, the control unit and other controllers; the high-speed protection unit is used for collecting photoelectric signals to generate fault signals and transmitting the fault signals to the control unit or the fault cascade unit; the control unit is used for realizing the processing and control of fault signals.

2. The controller connection structure according to claim 1, wherein the cable is a flat wire to which a plurality of D-sub connectors are crimped, and the number of the D-sub connectors is equal to the sum of the number of the main controller and the sub controller, and the polarities are opposite.

3. The controller connection structure according to claim 2, wherein the flat wire includes at least one of a power line, a communication line, a control line, a status line, a data line, and an address line.

4. The controller connection structure of claim 1, wherein the controller connection structure employs an RS-485 communication protocol.

5. A fiber laser comprising a plurality of laser modules, each of the laser modules comprising a single-cavity fiber laser, wherein the fiber laser further comprises a controller connection structure according to any one of claims 1-4, each of the sub-controllers being disposed within one of the laser modules.

6. The fiber laser of claim 5, wherein the failed cascode unit comprises a plurality of ADM series transceivers.

7. The fiber laser of claim 6, wherein a plurality of wires are disposed within the cable for transmitting a fault alert signal, thereby increasing the speed of the fiber laser to handle faults.

8. The fiber laser of claim 7, wherein the high-speed protection unit comprises: the optical fiber laser comprises a photoelectric detector, an optical signal comparator, a high-speed protection controller and a digital-to-analog converter, wherein the photoelectric detector is arranged on an optical path of the optical fiber laser and used for detecting the light leakage size of an optical fiber cladding, the optical signal comparator is used for comparing a detection signal of the photoelectric detector with a light leakage reference signal, the high-speed protection controller is used for closing a pumping source driver according to an output result of the optical signal comparator, and the digital-to-analog converter is used for providing the light leakage reference signal for the optical signal comparator.

9. The fiber laser of claim 8, wherein the high speed protection controller comprises a discrete flip-flop or a field programmable gate array.