Micromachining Lasers

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Micromachining Lasers

Laser micromachining which is used to produce mechanical structures with sub-millimeter features is rapidly growing in popularity as picosecond and femtosecond lasers are becoming more available.  Traditional laser ablation methods cannot be utilized to produce high tolerance machined parts with such small feature size,  due to the heat generated in the ablation process.  As a result, it is necessary to utilized ultra-fast lasers which have an electric field density large enough to create a Coulomb explosion.  This explosion caused by short pulse micromachining lasers can remove the material via a “cold ablation” process, therefore, preserving the integrity of the surrounding material.  In addition to the tolerancing advantage of Coulomb explosion in comparison to thermal ablation, there is the added benefit that since this is an electronic effect, there is no need to take the materials absorption properties into account making this a wavelength independent process. The adoption of laser micromachining has seen its most rapid adoption in the medical industry because short pulse micromachining lasers deliver superb quality when machining a variety of materials used for implantable devices.  On this page, you will find a list of all of the micromachining lasers we offer at RPMC.

To see a full list of other applications RPMC lasers are used for please check out our applications page by clicking here.