This would not only reduce the laser arriving to the material to be processed, but would also cause variations in the transmission conditions and beam focus.
It is therefore important that the entire optical path, from the source to the focusing element, is hermetically closed, and a protective gas (air or nitrogen) flows in slightly overpressure. This gas must be filtered for dust (diameter <0.1 μm, density <0.1 mg / Nm3) and de-oiled (content <0.01 mg / Nm3).
Many times, the failure to comply with this condition leads to serious problems in terms of reliability of the performance of the system