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thicknesses, from stainless steel, ultra-high-strength steel and titanium to polymers, textiles and more. Lasers are also capable of doing their work so cleanly that they can eliminate the need for secondary operations such as tedious manual fi nishing inside of tiny stents. An edge cut by a laser today is often clean and easily welded or painted, without a heat-affected zone (HAZ), as wavelength is controlled to be nearly perfectly absorbed within the material.


In terms of development for the future, lasers also


show no signs of slowing down. The industry’s move toward fi ber lasers over older


CO2


and Nd:YAG (neodymium-doped YAG) contin- ues, although the more mature technologies certainly have their areas of strength. Foremost, fi ber lasers are more cost-effi cient, using less energy than other types of lasers to do the same task. Fiber lasers have a beam wavelength of about 1.0 µm so they can be delivered to the cutting head with a thin glass fi ber. Generally speaking, today’s laser systems also


offer improved cutting speeds, edge quality and operating costs. When partnered with CNC fi ve-axis machines or robotics, they are highly effi cient tools that can precisely cut or weld a high volume of mate- rial, as they do in the automotive industry, where lasers have become a key tool for lightweighting by reducing the need for fl anges or other fastening.


Laser Drilling One of the fi rst applications of lasers in manu- facturing, which is still used today, is drilling. In that early use, thousands of holes were drilled in compo- nents for a jet engine. Today, laser drilling removes material through a va- riety of mechanisms, such as melting, evaporation and ablation, sometimes in combination. Various materials have different optical (absorption at wavelength) and thermal properties (thermal conductivity, heat of melt- ing/vaporization), which allows for selection of the correct wavelength and pulsing properties of the laser. Laser drilling has been demonstrated at aspect


ratios (depth/diameter) of greater than 20:1. Advantages of laser drilling over other noncon-


ventional methods, include shorter processing time, less expensive fi xtures, changes to hole diameters without changing “electrodes” or other “drill bits,” changes to hole locations by programming, and the ability to drill hard and nonconductive materials. Like any material removal process, optimization studies must be conducted to achieve the correct balance of cycle time, part quality, and part cost. The studies should focus on key process parameters for the material, and their effect on key quality character- istics of the part. Typically, wavelength, pulse width, energy/pulse and focal properties will have the biggest infl uence on hole quality. Optimal cycle time can be


Laser welding opens the door to new design methods, including size reduction or complete elimination of fl anges. When combined with the use of high-strength steel, this can lead to signifi cant weight savings, as this photo of a fl angeless underbody shows.


Photo courtesy Trumpf Laser


LF4


AdvancedManufacturing.org


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