Representative braids for links associated to plane immersed curves

In [AC(2)], A'Campo associates a link in S-3 to any proper generic immersion of a disjoint union of arcs into a 2-disc. We give a simple algorithmic way to produce, from the immersion, a representative braid for such links. As a by-product we get a minimal representative braid for any algebraic link, from a divide associated to a real deformation of the polynomial defining the link.