A technique to determine processing parameters of electron beams in welding electron guns

It is shown that the processing parameters of electron beams with power up to 6 kW and energy of 60 keV used in electron beam installations can be determined by means of light radiation from drift space. A digital photo camera-assisted technique to obtain an image is described. It is shown that the registered image processing allows one to obtain information on the internal structure of an electron beam. The dependence of focal length on the focusing magnet lens current is obtained. The peculiarities of current density distribution over beam cross section are revealed. It is found that the behavior of the beam current density distribution depends strongly on the conditions of major cathode heating. The proposed method to determine electron beam parameters can be applied to control operation conditions of processing equipment, for example, to find the accuracy of gun adjustment, as well as cathode state, from the behavior of the power density distribution. The obtained dependences of beam parameters on the operating conditions of an electron gun can be used when choosing processing parameters to reduce the quantity of work on experimental optimization of welding conditions.