BBW Lasertechnik GmbH
Phone: (0 80 36) 9 08 20- 0
Fax: (0 80 36) 9 08 20- 28
E-Mail: info@bbw-lasertechnik.de
Gewerbering 11
83134 Prutting
Fax: (0 80 36) 9 08 20- 28
E-Mail: info@bbw-lasertechnik.de
Gewerbering 11
83134 Prutting
Metal foils made of stainless steel or alloys are used to produce masks, screens, templates and fine blanked parts for a wide variety of applications. Common to all of them are the high demands on the quality of the parts. For example, shadow masks for lithography, vapor deposition or sputtering processes with defined characteristics, such as exact openings, sharp edges or smooth and clean surfaces as well as steep cutting edges are essential for perfect and reproducible results. Efficient production processes, i.e. a perfect combination of high speed, highest accuracy and reliable repeatability, are also crucial.
With the help of laser technology, even fragile and easily deformable materials such as foils can be cut precisely. Since the laser beam can be controlled very precisely, even complicated shapes with high-quality cuts are no challenge. Due to the small beam focus, detailed cutting patterns with tolerances of less than 1/10 mm are possible. The process has high repeatability, making it very easy to automate. Laser cutting is performed in three steps: direct combustion of the material, melting of the material with subsequent exhausting / evaporation of the resulting melt from the kerf with the help of process gases, evaporation of the cut material.
When fine cutting foils with a material thickness of less than 0.1 mm with USP lasers, the material is vaporized directly in the kerf (melt-free processing) - and with minimal heat input into the material. The formation of melt is avoided, resulting in precise, burr-free cut edges with low roughness and no distortion - even with the smallest metal parts or particularly thin and heat-sensitive materials.
If a scanner system is used, complex geometries can be implemented. However, due to the beam profile, there is no right-angled cutting edge on the beam entry side; the beam exit side is sharp-edged. The advantages of this type of cutting are the high processing speed and the narrow cutting gap. If the cutting edges need to be as vertical as possible, special processing optics are also required. Furthermore, thanks to the good focusing of the laser beam, very small hole diameters of up to 20 µm with an aspect ratio (depth/diameter) of up to 20 are possible. In addition, there is geometrical freedom of the hole in the direction of the bore as well as perpendicular to the direction of the bore. Cylindrical, conical or negatively conical hole geometries (longitudinal) as well as circular, elliptical and any free form (transverse) can be realized.