This publication gives a brief overview about recent applications with pulsed high power disc lasers in the nanosecond and femtosecond range.
There is an increasing number of new high-tech materials like which are designed to special mechanical and electrical needs. Lasers gain increasing share in the processing technologies, because laser effects mainly depend on optical, thermal and molecular properties of the materials. The use of lasers with high peak power gives additional freedom for high-quality machining.
In this work we demonstrate results of shortpulse (ns) and ultrashort-pulse (fs) laser machining of materials, which are difficult to process with mechanical tools or continuous wave laser sources:
High speed drilling of thin metal foils is reported as well as CFRP cutting, drilling of diamond, scribing of ceramics and transparent materials like glass and sapphire. We also demonstrate generation of features in the microscale at these materials.
Finally Nitinol stent cutting with a fs laser is described. The use of femtosecond lasers allows enhancing quality significantly, because thermal effects in a wide extent can be prevented by careful tuning of laser and focussing parameters. This laser type is available in industrial quality now. An impressive advantage of thermal-free processing is dross-free cutting, which opens the opportunity to avoid dross-removal postprocessing.