Laser cutting and drilling

Measure a thousand times and cut once

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• Laser cutting is today the most common industrial
application of the laser.
• Laser is able to cut faster and with a higher quality than
the competing processes.

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Comparison of Laser cutting with other cutting process

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 Advantages over other processes
Quality characteristics
•Very narrow kerf width giving a substantial saving in
material.
•Cut edges is square and not rounded
•Cut edge is smooth and clean requiring no further cleaning
or treatment.
•Cut edge is clean that it can be directly rewelded.
•No edge burr and dross adhesion can be avoided.
•Very narrow HAZ and negligible distortion.
•Blind cuts can be made in some materials, as wood or
acrylic.

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Process Characteristics
•Faster cutting processes.
•The workpiece does not need clamping.
•There is no tool wear since the process is a non-contact
cutting process.
•Cut can be made in any direction.
•The noise level is low.
•The process can easily be automated.
•Tool changes only programming changes so, process is
highly flexible.
• Nearly all materials can be cut easily, friable, brittle,
electric conductors or nonconductors, hard or soft ,except
highly reflective materials such as aluminum, copper and
gold
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Different ways in which the laser can be
used to cut

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 Vaporization cutting/drilling

• The focused beam first heats up the surface to boiling

point and so generates a keyhole.
• Keyhole causes a sudden increase in the absorptivity due
to multiple reflections causing the hole to deepen quickly
and vapor generated escapes.
• This evaporation exerts a reaction force on the melt
surface as the vapor accelerates away
• Temperature gradient across the surface of the melt also
exerts forces through variations in surface tension.
• Both of these forces drive the melt to the side of the
forming hole.
.
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 Fusion Cutting (Melt and Blow)
• In fusion cutting, after penetration hole has been made,
sufficiently strong gas jet blows the molten material out
of the cut kerf
• The power needed to warm, melt, and partially vaporize
the cut kerf material is covered solely by the absorbed
laser radiation.
• Fusion cutting requires approximately half the power
needed for vaporization cutting and avoids high
temperature raise.
• Advantages of the fusion cutting process are
– oxide-free cut edges and
– perpendicular cut edges with high contour accuracy

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Fusion Cutting with Mirror Optics and
Autonomous Nozzles

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• In common laser cutting heads, the space between the
cutting nozzle and the focusing lens forms the pressure
chamber to build up the cutting gas pressure.
• The lens task is not only to focus the laser beam but also
to tightly seal the pressure chamber to the laser side of
the head.
• When mirror optics are used to focus the beam, the
space above the nozzle is open.
• To build up the cutting gas pressure, double-walled
nozzles (autonomous nozzles) can be used,by which the
cutting gas pressure is built in a ring-shaped structure.
• These nozzles produce a cutting gas stream that runs
coaxially to the laser beam and have characteristics
corresponding to those produced with conical standard
nozzles
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 Reactive Fusion Cutting (Melt, Burn and Blow)

• A gas capable of reacting exothermically with the

workpiece like oxygen is used instead of inert gas as in
the case of fusion cutting
• So, another heat source (heat released due to
exothermic reaction of reactive gas with workpiece) is
added to the process along with laser
• The gas passing through the kerf is not only dragging the
melt away, but is also reacting with the melt.
• The burning reaction starts, when the temperature
reaches the ignition temperature.
• The oxide is formed and is blown into the kerf

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• At the same laser power, cutting speeds for oxygen
cutting are higher than for fusion cutting.
• According to the portion of the reaction energy to the
energy by laser radiation, the difference in speed is
significant for thick materials cut with low laser power
and nearly negligible for thin materials and higher laser
power.
• Since there is a cutting reaction taking place, some
chemical change in the workpiece might happen
• Laser oxygen cutting is used for sheet thicknesses up to
approx. 25 mm

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 Controlled Fracture (Thermal stress cracking)

• Brittle material which is vulnerable to thermal fracture

can be quickly and neatly severed by guiding a crack
with a fine spot heated by a laser.
• The laser heats a small volume of the surface, causing it
to expand
• This will cause tensile stresses all around it.
• Any crack in this space will act as a stress raiser and the
cracking will continue in the direction towards the hot
spot.
• The speed at which a crack can be guided until the crack
approaches an edge
• This cutting method is best suitable for glass as speed,
edge quality and precision are very good

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 Scribing

• This is a process for making a groove or line of holes

either fully penetrating or not, but sufficient to
weaken the structure so that it can be mechanically
broken.
• Scribing particularly used for silicon chips and
alumina substrates, because of lack of debris and
little HAZ.
• Thus, low-energy, high-power-density pulses are
used to remove the material principally as vapor.

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 Cold Cutting

• This is a new technique only recently observed with the

introduction of high-powered excimer lasers of the order
of picoseconds.
• The energy of the ultraviolet photon is similar to the
bond energy for many organic materials.
• A bond is struck by such a photon, then it may break.
• When this radiation is passed onto plastic with a
sufficient flux of photons so that there is at least one per
bond, then the material just disappears without heating,
leaving a hole with little to no debris or even edge
damage.

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• This exciting new technique for
engraving is a dream come true
for the electronics manufacturer
• The potential medical
applications include a micro
surgery and engineering with
single cells, as well as more
conventional tumour ablation

A human hair carved

using an excimer laser

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 Burning-Stabilized Laser Oxygen Cutting
(LASOX)

• In burning-stabilized laser oxygen cutting, in addition to

the laser radiation, a second heating source (e.g., a
burner flame, an inductive heating, or a second laser
beam) is used, with which the cutting front upper edge is
heated to combustion temperature.
• In contrast to laser oxygen cutting, this method requires
a heated spot to be produced, whose diameter is larger
than the diameter of the oxygen jet.
• The heated spot is found in the cutting direction in front
of the cutting nozzle or it is placed around the nozzle.

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• Auxiliary heating source prevents
the periodic extinguishing of the
iron combustion at lower cutting
speeds
• In this way, quicker cutting speeds
are possible than when using laser
oxygen cutting.
• If only the stabilizing preheating
power of the burning-stabilized
process is used for cutting, then
the cutting process passes over
into autogenous flame cutting.

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 General arrangement for Laser cutting

using transmissive optics using reflective optics.

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The principle components are
• Laser –source
• Shutter control- a retractable mirror which blocks the
beam path and diverts the beam into a beam dump
• Beam guidance train- focusing optics either reflective or
transmitive
• CNC control -a means of moving the beam or workpiece
relative to each other
• Nozzle-for gas flow at high pressure

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 Practical Performance
The parameters can be grouped as follows:
• Beam properties:
– Spot size and mode
– Power, pulsed or CW
– Polarization
– Wavelength
• Transport properties
– Speed
– Focal position
• Gas properties
– Jet velocity
– Nozzle position, shape, alignment
• Material properties
– Optical
– Thermal
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 Effect of Spot Size

• A decrease in spot size will increase the power density,

which affects the absorption and decrease the cut width.
• Lasers with stable power and low-order modes – usually
true TEM00 modes, as opposed to irregular mountain
modes cut considerably better than other lasers
• Wider cut widths, as in the LASOX process can result in
greater cut depths

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 Effect of Power

• Increasing the power allow cutting at faster speeds

and/or greater depths
• The potential disadvantage of increasing the power is
that the cut width increases
• High power may cause high temperature to terminate the
oxygen burning reaction and consequent loss of the
additional energy under reactive fusion cutting
• These problems can be controlled to a certain extent by
pulsing

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There are several styles of pulsing:
• Simple power switching, which turns the beam on and
off switching with excess current giving a super pulse
(energy 2–3 times the CW value)
• Q-switching using a very high speed switch in the laser
cavity (several thousand times the CW power)
• Hyper pulse Spiking on the CW beam with short power
surges

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 Effect of Beam Polarization

• There is a distinct difference in the reflection of a beam

at angles depending upon whether the electric vector is
at right angles to the plane of incidence (s-polarization)
or in the plane of incidence (p-polarization).
• If it is s-polarized, then it will suffer a high reflectivity and
if it is p-polarized, it will be preferentially absorbed.
• cutting machines fitted with circular polarizer cut equally
well in all directions.

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 Effect of Wavelength

• The shorter the wavelength, the higher the absorptivity

and finer focus.
• Very short wavelengths, in the ultraviolet, have energetic
photons of energy similar to the bond energy in organic
material thus able to directly break bonds as in cold
cutting
• Fiber lasers with monomode fibers give TEM00 beams at
1.03 or 1.55 μm wavelength whose penetration powers
are significantly better than those of other lasers.

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 Effect of Speed

• The faster the cutting, the less time there is for the heat
to diffuse sideways, therefore narrow HAZ and also
narrow kerf

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 Effect of Focal Position

• The surface spot size determines the

surface power intensity and optimum
cutting may be obtained by having
the minimum spot size below the
surface.
• But problem is related to absorption
on the cut face and how to keep the
energy together
• A new type of dual-focus lens has
the effect of increasing the depth of
focus of the beam and increased
intensity within the kerf
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 Effect of Gas Jet Velocity

• Increasing the gas jet velocity

increases the cutting rate up to
a point
• Too high a gas velocity with a
reactive gas causes excessive
side burning
• Clean-cut nozzle produce
burrless, striation-free cuts at
1atm inner nozzle and 5 atm
outter nozzle.

A high-pressure ring
nozzle used for the
“clean cut” technique32
 Effect of Nozzle Alignment

• The alignment affects both the roughness of the cut and

the way the dross clears the kerf
• Misaligning the beam makes the specimen clear of
dross (slag) but with all the dross clinging to the waste
material.

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 Effect of Optical Properties

• High-reflectivity materials would be more difficult to cut

• Reflectivity is not only a function of the material but is
also a function of the surface shape , presence of
surface films (such as oxides), surface plasmas and
multi photon interactions
• Thin films such as oxides, the absorption can be strongly
time dependent
• Cutting rate significantly depends on the surface finish

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 Effect of Thermal Properties

The ease with which a material can be successfully cut

depends upon the absorptivity, the melting point of the
material or oxide formed, char tendency and brittleness
associated with the coefficient of thermal expansion

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 Applications of Laser Cutting

• Die Board Cutting

First industrial applications of the laser was for die
board cutting to manufacture cartons
• Cutting of Quartz Tubes
Quartz tubes are used for car halogen lamps are cut by
500WCO2 lasers with significant saving of material
• Profile Cutting
Display industry, typewriter parts, gun parts,
medical components, valve plates, gaskets, stained
glass, filter meshes, chainsaw parts

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• Cloth Cutting
Garment ,car floor carpets , seat covers, car air bags and
edging of embroideries
• Aerospace Materials
Hard and brittle ceramics such as SiN, titanium alloy
airframe, stabilizer components, aluminum alloys, Boron-
epoxy and titanium-coated aluminum honeycomb plates,
stainless steel pressed parts
• Cutting Fiber Glass
Cutting fibre glass with reduction of dust, no cracking of
the edges and no tool wear
• Cutting Kevlar (para-aramid synthetic fiber )
High strength and light weight nylon-based epoxy armour
plate can be cut by laser
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• Prototype Car Production
Power-steering pump wipers, door lock holes,
dashboard appliques, three-dimensional axle carriers,
PVC auto roof liners, parts for punch die sets, seat
covers, exhaust systems, air-conditioning ports, wiper
blades, air bags, hydro formed tubes and parts for
tailored blanks.
• Furniture Industry
Cutting timber of any hardness up to depths of 4 cm is
possible
• Cutting Alumina and Dielectric Boards
This is done by both through cutting and scribing.
• Cutting Paper and Flexographic Print Rolls

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• Electronics Applications
Cutting of circuit boards,resistance trimming of circuits,
functional trimming of circuits and microlithography
• Cutting Radioactive Materials
Work on radioactive materials is considerably easier
with optical energy
• Scrap Recovery
Careful cutting of old telephone switches allows the
recovery of the considerable precious metals content
• Shipbuilding
The laser is powerful enough to cut the 15mm plate
required for ships and by use of the LASOX process
thicknesses up to 50mm are now possible

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 Process Variations

Arc-augmented Laser Cutting

•An electric arc is located near the laser-generated melt
pool.
•Arc will automatically root at the high-temperature zone
•The magnetic pinch caused by this hot zone will constrict
the arc to near the size of the laser beam for low-current
arcs up to 80 A
•When the arc is on the underside of the workpiece, then
the cutting process can be speeded up by a factor of
around 2

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Hot Machining

• Laser is used to heat the material and thus soften it just

prior to mechanical machining
• This reduces the cutting force by about 50%, provided
that
– the heating is correctly located
– does not allow for quenching from the bulk material
in-between heating and machining, (quenching
results in transformation hardening instead of
softening)

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 Laser drilling

Four different laser drilling techniques are used depending

on the requirements concerning geometrical specifications
(diameter, depth), quality (precision), and productivity
(drilling time)
•Single-pulse drilling
Large number of holes with diameters ≤1mm and depths
≤3mm with single pulse and pulse durations in the range
of 100μs to 20ms
•Percussion drilling
Holes with diameters ≤1mm and depths up to 20 mm with
pulse durations from fs to ms

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• Trepanning
Machining a through hole
with a single pulse or with
percussion drilling is
followed by a relative
movement between laser
radiation and workpiece
• Helical drilling
Laser radiation is rotated
relative to the workpiece.
Typically pulse duration in
the nanosecond range are
used

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Laser melt drilling and laser sublimation drilling

• In melt drilling, melt pool is formed and a part of the

material is vaporized due to the increasing temperature.
• The recoil pressure of the vapor accelerates the melt
and expels it along the hole wall.
• As a result of thermal conductivity and convective heat
transfer, the melt is flowing away radially from the bottom
of the hole and melts additional material, which widens
the hole.
• The high drilling rates attainable with this method but
poor precision

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• To minimize melt deposits the material is removed by
means of laser sublimation drilling.
• The irradiated intensity has to be higher and the pulse
duration is much smaller than in laser melt drilling
(typically< 10 ps).
• This results in higher precision and a smaller drilling rate.
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 Single-pulse drilling

• Melting and
Vaporization at the
Bottom of the Hole
• Widening of the Hole
• Solidification of the
Melt at the Hole Wall
• Shadowing of the
Laser Radiation and
Closuring of the Hole
• Recondensation

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 Applications

• Medical engineering,
Suture holes on surgical
needles
• Automobile manufacture
Micro fuel filters
• Aviation
Holes on outer skin of the
tail fin to reduce air vortices,
aerostatic air bearings
• Toolmaking

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 Percussion drilling
• Percussion drilling is a pulsed process, in which material
is removed with consecutive pulses with durations in the
femtosecond to millisecond
• The depth of the drill hole increases with each pulse, as
does the recoil pressure required to expel the melt out
• The recast on the drill-hole wall can accumulate until the
melt forms a closure.
• At the closure, the laser radiation is reflected, diffracted,
and absorbed, and the solidified mass is re-melted
• This process recurs at different points in the drill hole
due to the consecutive pulses
• The absorption at closure by solidified melt can result in
local expansion of the drill hole (lateral convection) and
thus a reduced reproducibility of the drill-hole geometry 48
Formation of multiple recast layers during
percussion drilling: (a) one pulse, (b) two
pulses, (c) three pulses, and (d) four pulses

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 Applications

• Drilling of cooling holes in

the turbine blades of
aircraft engines and
stationary turbines
• Holes in filters and nozzles
for ink-jet printers
• Feed through holes for
solar cells
• Holes in combustion-
chamber plate
• Drawing dies, tiny holes
with diameters down to
between 10 and 50μm

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 Trepanning

• Trepanning is a combined cutting and drilling process

• In trepanning, a through hole is first pierced by
percussion drilling
• Through hole is widened to its final diameter in a circular
cutting motion
• The required diameter achieved either directly in a single
step or consecutive positioning steps with the beam
describing concentric circles or a spiral
• The relative movement of the laser beam is achieved by
positioning table scanning optics, or special-purpose
trepanning optics

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Schematic of the trepanning process

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 Applications

•Typical areas of application for trepanning are power-

generation and turbine engineering, the automotive
industry and tool making.

Vent holes in a mold for CDs

Diesel fuel injectors

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 Helical driling
• This process is the same as for trepanning except that
full penetration is not achieved with the first pulses but a
hole is created by machining down in a spiral manner to
the breakthrough point
• The revolution of the laser beam on the helical path and
a rotation of the laser beam in itself synchronized with
the helical path

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 Helical driling optics

Using wedges Dove Prism Spinning beam

Types of drill holes that can be produced by helical drilling 55

 Applications

High surface quality drills with small melt deposits and the
holes with a positive or negative conical taper can be drilled
•Injection nozzles for the automotive industry,
•Spinning nozzles in textile engineering,
•Dosage nozzles for hydraulic systems
•Drill holes in air bearings
•Drawing dies made of diamond for wire manufacturing,
•Starting holes for wire cut EDM.

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 References

• WilliamM. Steen , Jyotirmoy Mazumder,“Laser Material

Processing”,4th Edition, Springer-Verlag London Limited
2010
• William M. Steen, “Laser Material Processing”, Springer
Verlag, 2003.
• Reinhart Poprawe(Editor), “Tailored Light 2-Laser
Application Technology”, Springer-Verlag Berlin
Heidelberg 2011

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