2TU Dresden, Germany

Interest in micro machining of flow components with laser beam has increased since conventional methods like punching and EDM are slowly coming to their limits, either in dimensions or cost wise. One laser of choice is the Copper Vapor Laser, as up to now it has the potential to deliver the highest power (30 W) at short pulse length (25 ns), high rep rate (30 kHz) and moderate costs of all commercial lasers known to the authors.

We will report on the performance of the laser and our machining set up incorporating a trepanning head and a galvo head. Machining examples in stainless steel will be presented. An outlook will be given for establishing a closed loop process control using optical sensors.