Laser Micromachining With a Fiber Laser Marker: Fast, Cheap & Flexible

You read that correctly – laser micromachining of metals can be faster and cheaper with fiber laser markers. Their superior beam quality can achieve results similar to traditional machining technologies at less than half the cost! Plus – laser markers can…mark things! Who wouldn’t want one piece of equipment to do several things? And do them so well?

So, ask yourself if fiber laser markers are well suited to your laser micromachining application. You can answer yes if you are:

• A high volume manufacturer looking to meet miniaturization machining challenges while reducing costs.
• Thinking about updating or replacing electric discharge machining (EDM) equipment.
• Considering using 532 or 355nm lasers for a new process.

How does equipment designed to mark materials end up being such a great choice for machining? New single mode fiber laser markers feature extremely high beam quality, with an M squared of less than 1.3, producing a focused optical spot size down to 20 microns, making them particularly suited for scribing and cutting alumina, silicon, copper, and aluminum foils. In addition, the use of selectable pulse width waveforms with different pulse widths and peak power characteristics enables tuning of both the removal rate and quality of the feature surface.

What can you do with a fiber laser micromachining system?

• Selective plating removal for solder barrier (see photo for two examples of using a fiber laser for solder barriers).
• Solar cell scribing and hole drilling.
• Hole drilling of stainless steels for medical hypo tubes and fluid flow control systems.
• Cutting sub 0.02-inch thick metals for fast part prototyping.
• Machining ceramics, commonly used in microelectronics, where the laser can help avoid micro cracking for a wide variety of features in ceramic materials.
• Select the exact resistance value for a circuit.
• Resistance or capacitance trimming, as part of a dynamic iterative removal and measure tuning process in which removal areas may change from component to component.

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