SYNRAD, INC. - http://www.synrad.com  
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Issue 83

SYNRAD's sealed CO₂ lasers are used in a variety of industrial processes including cutting, welding, drilling, and marking. This news brief showcases some of the interesting materials and products that are processed daily by Synrad's line of CO₂ lasers and marking heads.

Cutting Carbon Nanofoam Paper

Carbon Nanofoam paper
exhibiting cleanly cut edges.



Scanning Electron Microscope
Magnification 200x

Carbon nanofoam is a new type of electrically conductive material that exhibits many properties common to aerogels. Both materials are low-density solids, featuring very low thermal conductivity with scalable optical and acoustic properties.

Current uses of carbon nanofoams include applications for lightweight, high-temperature insulation; as coatings or absorbents; in specialty optics; and as flexible electrodes for deionization and fuel cells. When used as a flexible electrode, carbon nanofoam paper offers a large surface area, low resistance, and high capacitance with virtually no contact resistance with the carbon electrode structure.

Due to its composition, carbon nanofoam paper has proven very difficult to cut using traditional methods such as metal blades.  Synrad found that using 100 W of power at a speed of 250 inches per minute (IPM) the 0.0075-inch thick carbon nanofoam paper was cleanly cut. 

For cutting this material, our XY motion system was configured for a 2.5” positive meniscus lens (0.004” spot size with a 0.054” depth of focus) and nitrogen assist gas regulated at 5 PSI. 
 

CO₂ Wire Stripping

 



Using Synrad Lasers
to cleanly ablate wire coatings ensures that the wire remains untouched and undamaged.
 

Wire stripping applications are a great fit with SYNRAD’s CO₂ laser technology. Typical plastic-type wire coatings (PVC, Teflon, Mylar, etc.) are highly absorptive to CO₂ energy and are cleanly ablated or vaporized away while wire materials, typically copper or aluminum, are reflective to the CO₂ wavelength. In contrast to traditional mechanical stripping methods that may nick or damage the metallic conductor, CO₂ laser stripping removes the insulation coating leaving the wire untouched and undamaged.

The flat, multi-conductor cable shown in the photo was stripped by raster-scanning a rectangular 0.6” × 0.15” area using an FH Series marking head and 25 watts of power. In WinMark Pro, we set a Velocity of 40 inches per second and a Resolution value of 350. The Mark Passes property was set to two (2) so that the coating was cleanly ablated from the conductors. This process was repeated on both sides of the conductor in a cycle time of 2.3 seconds per side.

Marking Plastic Vial Caps

Top of cap, exhibiting legible marks that can be easily read by either human or machine.

Many industries, especially pharmaceutical and medical firms, are moving to clearly identify and track their products using familiar barcodes or 2D codes. Even plain text is now marked, or in some cases, molded into products and read using optical character verification (OCV) vision tools. These automated systems can be integrated throughout the product path from the manufacturing floor to pick and pack machinery in the manufacturers warehouse to the end-users shelf.

 These plastic vial caps demonstrate the ability of SYNRAD CO₂ lasers to mark legible human-readable and machine-readable text on a variety of surfaces.

The photo shows an easily readable, engraved mark created with an FH Series marking head fitted using a 125 mm focusing lens. The 125 mm lens provides a 180-micron (0.007”) diameter spot with a 3 mm (0.118”) depth of focus. The text was created in WinMark Pro using an outlined TrueType^® font (Arial) set to a Text Height of 0.1427”, a mark Velocity of 15 inches per second, and a Resolution of 300.

Total cycle time was 0.16 seconds. Cycle time was further reduced to only 0.11 seconds after changing from a TrueType font to one of WinMark Pro’s twelve built-in stroke fonts.

Browse Synrad's Applications Database

Search our online library for more applications of Synrad's sealed CO₂ laser technology. Sort by material, process, or industry.

http://www.synrad.com/search_apps/Default.htm

Do you have an interesting application using Synrad Lasers?  Would you like to see it published in the Synrad Newsletter?  We would love to hear from you!  Please send your story ideas to: editor@synrad.com

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Copyright (c) 2004 SYNRAD, Inc. All rights reserved.