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Laser Cutting

Laser cutting does have a diversified application starting from thin sheet metal cutting for general purpose equipment, such as household appliances, electrical cabinets, automotive components, thick section metal cutting for trucks, buildings, stoves, construction equipment, shipbuilding etc. Titanium alloys cut in an inert atmosphere are used in airframe manufacture. Aluminum alloys have similar advantages in cutting by using the laser, which has to be well turned and of higher power. Cutting of radioactive material is another important area of application of laser cutting

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86 views2 pages

Laser Cutting

Laser cutting does have a diversified application starting from thin sheet metal cutting for general purpose equipment, such as household appliances, electrical cabinets, automotive components, thick section metal cutting for trucks, buildings, stoves, construction equipment, shipbuilding etc. Titanium alloys cut in an inert atmosphere are used in airframe manufacture. Aluminum alloys have similar advantages in cutting by using the laser, which has to be well turned and of higher power. Cutting of radioactive material is another important area of application of laser cutting

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Laser cutting

The general arrangement for cutting with a laser is shown inFig.(a,b). The
cutting is done either using a transmissive (glass) or reflecting (metal mirror) optics. The
transmissive optics is made of ZnSe, GaAs or CdTe lenses for CO2 lasers or quartz lenses for
YAG or excimer lasers. The reflective optics consists of parabolic off-axis mirrors. The main
constituents for control and monitoring are the lasers with shutter control, beam guidance
train, focusing optics and a computer controlled translation stage to move the work-piece. The
shutter is usually a retractable mirror, which blocks and guides the beam into a water-cooled
device that measures the input power. During cutting, the mirror rapidly moves out and allows
the beam to be directed on to the work piece after passing through the beam guide that
directs the beam to center on a focusing optic. The focused beam then passes through a
nozzle from which a coaxial jet flows. The gas jet is needed both to aid the cutting operation
and to protect the optics from spatter. For cutting processes which rely on melt removal by the
gas jet there is a problem for the metal optics system. To achieve a gas jet suitable for cutting
(> 20 m/s and reasonably well focused) without interposing a transmissive elements, a set of
centrally directed nozzles or a ring jet can be used. For cutting non-conducting materials like
wood, carbon and plastics, the focused beam heats up the surface to boiling point and
generate a keyhole. The keyhole causes a sudden increase in absorptive due to multiple
reflections and the hole deepens quickly. The parameters controlling the laser cutting
operation are beam diameter, laser power, traverse speed, gas composition, material
thickness, reflectivity and thermo-physical properties.
Laser cutting does have a diversified application starting from thin sheet metal cutting
for general purpose equipment, such as household appliances, electrical cabinets, automotive
components, thick section metal cutting for trucks, buildings, stoves, construction equipment,
shipbuilding etc. Titanium alloys cut in an inert atmosphere are used in airframe manufacture.
Aluminum alloys have similar advantages in cutting by using the laser, which has to be well
turned and of higher power. Cutting of radioactive material is another important area of
application of laser cutting. Cutting of wood up to 1" thick for the die-board industry, furniture
industry, puzzle and gift industry, crafts and trophies, etc. Textile cutting examples include
plastics, rubbers, composites, cloth, ceramics, etc. Hard brittle ceramics such as SiN can be cut
ten times faster by laser than by diamond saw. Laser cutting is equally useful in manufacturing
special materials including laser cutting of circuit boards, resistance trimming of circuits,
functional trimming of circuits and microlithography. The growing use of the excimer laser is of
current interest. Hole drilling thorough circuit boards to join circuits mounted on both sides has
advantages. The excimer laser can do this without risk of some form of conductive charring.
The microelectronics industry is moving toward smaller feature sizes so as to improve
performance and lower cost. Small distances between chips together with the short
interconnection routes are conducive for faster operation. Laser processing for via generation,
direct pattern processing, image transfer, contour cutting and trimming now find increasing
application in microelectronics packaging industry. On the other hand, smaller spaces between
conductive patterns increases the risk of short circuits (caused by pattern faults, solder
bridges, migration, etc.), that emphasizes the need to ensure reliability of laser processing.
Illyefaalvi- Vitez (2001) has attempted utilization ofCO2 and frequency-multiplied Nd:YAGlasers
(using five wavelengths, i.e. 10600, 1064, 532, 355 and 266nm) for drilling and direct
patterning of copper clad glass fiber reinforced epoxy laminates, polyester foils and similar
packaging structures. Laser processing was combined with through contacting of the
generated vias by screen printing with polymer thick films, by wet chemical direct plating and
by evapouration of thin metal layers. The results show promising opportunities for laser
processing of metal layers and polymeric materials in microelectronics packaging. Analysis of
laser metal-cut energy process window is important to predict or develop a useful strategy for
cutting or machining operation for any engineering material (Bernstein et al 2000).A laserenergy window exists for each cut structure under a specified laser pulse. Experimental
observations showed that the differences between upper and lower corner stress is temporarily
dependent on the passivation breakthrough caused by upper corner cracks. In a recent model
on metal cutting with a gas assisted CO2 laser, laser cutting is considered as a surface reaction
and absorption process that needs an adjusting parameter to represent the absorptivity for
different materials at different incident angles [73]. The computation of the mass diffusion rate
at the gas/solid boundary of the cutting front includes the exothermic heat released during
cutting. It is shown that a very small level of impurity in oxygen exerts a significant influence
on the cutting performance. Earlier, the combined effect of chemical reactions taking place

between a gas jet and molten metal was considered adopting a laminar boundary layer
approach [75]. These models seem to work well for cutting speed of up to 30 mm/s and all jet
velocities up to sonic speed (as the effect of shock is ignored). Yue & Lau [74] have studied the
pulsed laser cutting of an AlLi/SiC metal matrix composite to examine the influences of laser
cutting parameters on the quality of the machined surface. Proper process control may
minimize the heat-affected zone, improve the quality of the machined surface and predict the
maximum depth-of-cut for the composite. Finally, the optimum condition for achieving high
cutting efficiency with minimum material damage was recommended.

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