Manufacturers optimize laser applications to achieve complex features and product designs through laser marking, ablation, drilling, and cutting.
FREMONT, CA: Manufacturing today uses lasers widely, especially when additive manufacturing and Industry 4.0 help engineers create more complex features and products with tight tolerances. As medical device manufacturers develop smaller and more advanced products, laser processes are becoming more and more popular. Traditional machining equipment cannot create fine features like those created by laser machining. It eliminates the need for some secondary finishing steps by providing clean, burr-free cuts without damaging the surrounding material.
The following manufacturing applications for lasers optimize manufacturing.
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Laser marking: Parts and products are increasingly tagged with unique identification numbers (UIDs) using lasers to facilitate recalls. Products with flat or curved part geometries or barcodes can be laser-marked with both human-readable information and barcodes. Medical devices can withstand many sterilization cycles with laser markings because they are highly durable.
Surface texturing: Lasers are useful for creating textures or patterns on components and products that increase their physical performance, such as wear rates, grip, optical properties, and load capacities. The depth resolution allows for the production of patterns with features as small as 10 meters. Using laser micro texturing on medical implants can create rough surfaces that allow new tissue or bone to attach and grow into the implant more easily.
Laser ablation: Manufacturers utilize laser beams and adjust pulse length, wavelength, and intensity according to the processed material. This subtractive machining method vaporizes materials with high precision. Abrasion or heat cannot harm the surface of a material fabricated by ablation, which makes it ideal for working with sensitive materials like nanomaterials or superconductive materials.
Laser drilling: In a wide range of materials, including metals, polymers, and ceramics, lasers are extremely accurate in drilling micron-sized holes. Through methods such as direct writing, trepanning, and mask projection, manufacturers produce small, complex features in various materials without destroying the material or causing heat damage. Almost all manufactured parts today have microscopic details that laser drilling can achieve.
Laser Cutting: The laser beam ablates material, makes straight cuts, or cuts patterns in a material or component to very precise depths. The laser can cut various materials, including steel, aluminum, and titanium, to micron-level accuracy. It is common to use ultrafast lasers for cutting metals and polymers because they create clean edges without causing heat damage.
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