Benefits of micromachining with lasers

Lasers are good for far more than slicing sheet metal and defending against alien space invaders. Without them, many of today’s high-tech products would be impossible to manufacture. Microfluidic devices, integrated circuits, medical stents and catheters, automotive fuel injector nozzles are all drilled, milled, surface-textured and ablated via laser micromachining.

PhotoMachining’s three-wavelength, ultrashort-pulse micromachining system can drill high-density holes in polymers. Image courtesy PhotoMachining.

Nor are lasers only used for subtractive manufacturing. Laser microwelding joins many parts that would otherwise remain forever separate, and most 3D printing systems incorporate lasers, including direct metal laser sintering and similar metals-based additive processes.

Much of this is because of a laser’s versatility. For starters, there’s virtually no limit to what they can cut—glass, ceramic, metal, polymers, silicon and even diamond yield before a laser’s high-energy photons. In addition, those materials are readily machined into highly accurate and, in some cases, unbelievably small parts and part features.

Ronald Schaeffer, CEO of laser machining company PhotoMachining Inc., Pelham, N.H., said people turn to laser micromachining when they’ve run out of other options. “We go much smaller than chipmaking or EDM processes and are faster and more accurate besides. Also, we’re not limited to electrically conductive materials as is [the case with] EDM, which opens the door to a much wider range of machining applications.”

Machining the hardest known substance, diamond, is possible with lasers. Here, a pillar is built by removing the surrounding area. Image courtesy Newson USA.

The cross sections of this laser-machined Nitinol stent measure 150µm (0.0059″) across. Image courtesy LPL Systems.​