Advanced engineering materials, such as ceramics and ceramic composites, are being used increasingly in a number of manufacturing applications. These materials offer very attractive properties including high hardness, high strength and high wear and corrosion resistance. However, because of these very same properties, ceramic materials are difficult to machine. Conventional processes for machining ceramic materials are diamond grinding and ultrasonic machining. Both of these processes are extremely slow and labour intensive and often can not provide the required precision and finish. Lately, lasers have demonstrated to be very effective in machining these hard materials.
This paper presents, recent results of our work on the machining of hard ceramics using pulsed Nd:YAG lasers. The effects of laser frequency, focal position, percentage spot overlap, machining speed, and number of layers removed on the depth of the machined groove and surface roughness are discussed. An application of the technology for machining a complex profile is presented.