Patent ID: 8593722

Claim:
A thermally stabilized high speed laser processing system for deflecting laser pulses to selected targets within a laser processing field according to a laser processing sequence, the system comprising: a controller for executing a sequence of laser processing commands and for thermally stabilizing system components, the commands including a delivered laser pulse energy command and a delivered laser pulse position command regarding a laser pulse position within the laser processing field, the controller generating one or more deflector control signals responsive to said laser processing commands to thermally stabilize at least one system component; and at least one RF signal generator that is configured to receive a deflector control signal and to generate a respective RF drive signal, each RF drive signal comprising a sequence of transmitting and non-transmitting RF pulses, each transmitting RF pulse characterized by a predetermined transmitting frequency corresponding to a selected target coordinate within the laser processing field and characterized by a respective predetermined thermal load, and each non-transmitting RF pulse characterized by respective non-transmitting frequencies and respective compensatory thermal loads, whereby each RF drive signal provides a stabilized thermal load of transmitting RF pulses and compensatory non-transmitting RF pulses in at least one acousto-optic modulator; wherein the at least one acousto-optic modulator is configured to receive a respective RF drive signal and to deflect laser pulses according to the laser processing sequence to irradiate predetermined target coordinates with predetermined laser pulse energy.