Simplified power supply for long pulse CO2 laser using zero cross switching technique

We propose a simple power supply for a longitudinally pulsed CO₂ laser with long pulse duration by the switching control of AC line (60 Hz) on HV leakage transformer primary, which can generate long pulse of about 3 ms compared to a typical pulsed power supply. In this power supply, a low voltage open loop control for high voltage discharge circuit is employed to avoid the HV sampling or switching, and AC line voltage switched directly by a SCR is applied to the leakage transformer primary. Thus, there is no need of a rectified bridge and an energy-storage capacitor in the discharge circuit, and the leakage transformer allows one to omit a current-limiting resistor. In order to control the laser output power, the pulse repetition rate is adjusted up to 60 Hz. A ZCS circuit and a PIC one-chip microprocessor are used to control the gate signal of SCR precisely.