Laser milling: Tool making capabilities

Laser milling is a relatively new manufacturing process that has attracted much attention from engineers and researchers for the last decade. The process allows complex parts and tooling inserts to be fabricated directly from 3D CAD data in a wide range of advanced engineering materials such as ceramics, hardened steel, bulk metallic glasses, titanium and nickel alloys. The paper discusses the process design and implementations issues in applying the laser milling technology for tool making. Especially, the focus is on design and implementation of appropriate material removal strategies and the necessary optimisation of processing parameters to produce replication tools with required surface integrity and resolution. Two application case studies are used to demonstrate the capabilities of the laser milling process, in particular for the fabrication of replication tools for serial manufacture of micro needles arrays for drug delivery and bio inspired surface structures for drag reduction. The paper concludes with a discussion of tool making capabilities and limitations of laser milling technology.