The process of fine details micromachining plays a very important role in high-volume manufacturing in various fields of laser application such as consumer electronics, medical devices, and automotive industry. Thus, highly accurate laser systems allow producing tiny holes, fine cuts, and narrow scribes. For example, the production of a usual smartphone that has thousands of details requires making millions of drilled holes and accurately cut parts by fiber lasers.
It is not surprising that accuracy and quality, high throughput and quite a low cost per machined unit are required for micromachining these fine details. Despite the fact that mechanical methods, for example, drilling, milling, sawing and sandblasting can be suitable in quality and offer minimal heat damage, but there are some limits on the size and consistency of details.
Compared to mechanicals and other methods, laser technology provides higher accuracy, smaller details and improved consistency with no laser system wear. Nevertheless, the achievement of the mentioned characteristics required great advances in laser technology that were achieved just in recent years.
One of the purposes for micromachining by the laser system is considered to be a removal only the required material, generally through the method of localized heating, at the same time, the fiber laser minimize heating off and damage. To achieve the required result, it is necessary to deliver high-quality irradiation from a near-perfect laser beam accurately to the target region.
Herewith, shorter wavelengths and shorter pulse widths are important in achieving the results. Moreover, the second purpose for micromachining process made by the laser system is the opportunity to reach high machining throughput. It should be noted that the increase of average output power in the fiber laser results in higher ablation rates, however, with certain limitations.
A possible solution to the current problem is tailoring of the pulse sequence produced a laser beam, with pulse bursts and pulse shapes. To be more precise, the energy-time profile from the laser beam is able to be tailored and optimized for a certain material and its interaction with the fiber laser system light so that the incident energy can be employed almost entirely to material removal and not excess heating.
Finally, the laser system cost is considered to be a key factor for the micromachining industry. Moreover, the cost increase from the fiber laser process for each manufactured detail is the most crucial figure that containing such parameters as amortization of the upfront laser system cost, cost of operation, lost productivity from downtime, and process yield.
Optromix is a fast-growing fiber laser manufacturer and a vendor of optical fiber sensors and optical monitoring systems. The company offers fast turnkey solutions and creates sophisticated fiber laser systems for special purposes. Optromix uses only its own technologies and develops a broad variety of fiber lasers. If you have any questions or would like to buy a laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com
