Highly dynamic positioning of individual laser beams in a multi-beam system for laser surface processing

State-of-the-art multi-beam optics suffer from a distortion of the multi-beam array when the array is scanned over the work piece. This distortion is inherent to 2D (and 3D) laser scan heads and heavily limits the usable scan field and/or achievable processing accuracy. Here, an optical system for the independent 3D-positioning of individual beams in a multi-beam setup is presented. This approach allows to dynamically and precisely position each individual beam even for large scan fields and on tilted or curved work pieces.