Drilling

Application samples (please click to enlarge)

Principle of Operation

Drilling with solid state lasers is a thermal removal process. Due to the strong focused laser beam with high energy density, material is melted and evaporated. As a result of the evaporation and assist gas pressure, the material is thrown out of the hole.
To reach the necessary energy density, only pulsed solid state lasers are being used.
There are 2 drilling techniques depending on the requested hole diameter.

Percussion Drilling
This method, depending on materials, is used for hole diameters from 20 to 1200 µm.
The aspect ratio (diameter/hole depth) can be as high as 1:200.

Trepanning
In case the laser beam diameter is much smaller than the hole diameter, the trepanning process is used.
The beam is lead by a rotating optic unit, which cuts out the hole. If necessary the part can also be moved.

For drilling of different materials such as

• high alloyed steel
  
• precious and nonferrous metal
  
• tungsten and molybdenum
  
• tantalum, nickel, beryllium
  
• aluminum, titanium