Trends in laser micromachining

Frank Gaebler; Joris van Nunen; Andrew Held

doi:10.1117/12.2219749

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4 March 2016 Trends in laser micromachining

Frank Gaebler, Joris van Nunen, Andrew Held

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Proceedings Volume 9736, Laser-based Micro- and Nanoprocessing X; 973604 (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2219749
Event: SPIE LASE, 2016, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Laser Micromachining is well established in industry. Depending on the application lasers with pulse length from μseconds to femtoseconds and wavelengths from 1064nm and its harmonics up to 5μm or 10.6μm are used. Ultrafast laser machining using pulses with pico or femtosecond duration pulses is gaining traction, as it offers very precise processing of materials with low thermal impact. Large-scale industrial ultrafast laser applications show that the market can be divided into various sub segments. One set of applications demand low power around 10W, compact footprint and are extremely sensitive to the laser price whilst still demanding 10ps or shorter laser pulses. A second set of applications are very power hungry and only become economically feasible for large scale deployments at power levels in the 100+W class. There is also a growing demand for applications requiring fs-laser pulses. In our presentation we would like to describe these sub segments by using selected applications from the automotive and electronics industry e.g. drilling of gas/diesel injection nozzles, dicing of LED substrates. We close the presentation with an outlook to micromachining applications e.g. glass cutting and foil processing with unique new CO lasers emitting 5μm laser wavelength.

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Frank Gaebler, Joris van Nunen, and Andrew Held "Trends in laser micromachining", Proc. SPIE 9736, Laser-based Micro- and Nanoprocessing X, 973604 (4 March 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2219749

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