[Breaking Taps] has a nice pulsed fiber laser and decided to try it out with a silicon micromachine. You can see the results in the video below. Silicon absorbs the IR of the laser well, although the physical properties of silicon leave something to be desired. He’s also still fine-tuning the process for steel, copper, and brass, which might be a bit more practical.
The laser has pulses of very short duration, but the pulses have a lot of energy. This was experimental, so some tests didn’t work very well, but some – like the gears – look great.
This probably isn’t going to work with your $200 Chinese laser engraver. But if you have the right kind of laser (his is a generic that costs about $4000-$6000), the tips on focal length and timing will probably leave you experimenting a bit on your own. save wood.
We have to admit we were a little jealous. Not only does he have access to a pretty nice laser, but he also has access to a scanning electron microscope that is of better quality than the one we used to use and we don’t even have it anymore. In the video you can see a lot of analyzes of the parts performed under the SEM.
If you want to justify the cost of a fiber laser, they do make decent PCBs. We’ve even seen a bit of how these lasers work internally.
This post Micromachining with a laser | hackaday
was original published at “https://hackaday.com/2022/04/19/micromachining-with-a-laser/”
