The Laser Micro-Jet® is now a well-established technique for micro-machining and high-quality machining of hard materials. The advantages of the water-jet guided laser ablation are narrow parallel cut walls without focus adaptation, minimizing the heat-affected zone by the water cooling and the avoidance of burrs due to constant water flow.
To further enhance this innovative technology towards industry 4.0, automation and sensing packages have been implemented into the CNC platforms. Ease of use measures include self-calibration by an automatic adjustment of the water jet angle and an automatic alignment of the laser beam into the waterjet nozzle, guaranteeing precision.
The process has become self-correcting by adding a break-through sensor, which detects the end of cutting or drilling by a change in the processing light when the laser fully traverses the material. The suppression of unnecessary extra passes leads to a diminution in overall processing time, in some cases up to 20 %, additionally the cutting defect rate drops below 1%.
The integration of an automatic jet laminarity sensor adds the ability to detect waterjet degradation over time and is the first step towards machine self-check. Finally, Synova is developing automatic 3D-machining with depth sensing capabilities for a controlled and feed-backed ablation of 3D-profiles. An intelligent choice of toolpath, adapted to the LMJ-technology, will further advance feedforward machining capabilities.
Aerospace and working tool industries are in a high demand of high resistant functional parts which can provide safety and sustainability at reasonable cost. Laser technology delivers hereby a well-defined portfolio of instruments which are already delivered and certified in these markets. High throughput can be achieved by high power long pulse radiation, whereby hybrid processing is of further advantage to raise the total yield of the process. By contrast, high quality products can be achieved by application of UV and/or short pulsed laser radiation. However, the latter occurs at the price of relatively low throughput. Structuring of industrial parts with high material removal rates with low material impact is, therefore, not that evident.
The Laser MicroJet®, being the proprietary technology of Synova S.A., is already applied in the numerous applications serving markets such as diamond, working tools, aerospace, energy, watches, medical and semiconductor industries. The technology is centred on the coupling of laser light into a hair-thin laminar flow water jet, typically in the order of 25 to 120 microns in diameter. During cutting or grooving applications, the laser is used to ablate and melt the workpiece whilst the water-jet serves the purposes of cleaning, cooling and guiding. Low heat affected zone, absence of the heat accumulation and high throughput are characteristic features of the process. Until now, material removal rates (MRR) up to 13 mm3/min in Inconel and 2 mm3/min in PCBN have been reported. These materials are of high interest for aerospace and working tools manufacturing, respectively. Application of a new 400 W green laser together with the Laser MicroJet® has provided a tool to improve the MRR while retaining the low impact on the material. Inconel structuring has been progressed by increasing the MRR up to 30 mm3/min. In the paper we report both the new system and application results providing a turnkey instrument package for the addressed industries.
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