As more and more products are manufactured using alumina ceramic materials, it has become crucial to fabricate ceramic parts as fast as possible while eliminating the fracturing that often occurs when traditional cutting methods are employed. CO2 lasers are widely used in these cutting or scribing operations because the laser responds precisely to pulsed or modulated input signals. Careful matching of cut speed to the pulse frequency and duty cycle of the laser’s input signal serves to minimize heat input into ceramic materials, allowing you to obtain clean cuts without inducing fractures.

For this application, we setup our XY stage with a Firestar f201 laser and directed the beam through a 63.5 mm (2.5”) positive meniscus optic. The resulting focused spot has a diameter of 100 microns (0.004”) and a 1.8 mm (0.07”) depth of field. In addition, high-grade clean dry air at a pressure of 5.5 bar (80 PSI) was delivered coaxially with the beam to enhance the cut process. While cutting, we gated the f201 laser with 800 microsecond pulses at a frequency of 1.2 kHz. Using these parameters on the 1 mm (0.04“) thick fired alumina sample, we were able to achieve cleanly cut edges using 200 watts of average power at cut speeds of 1.02 meters per minute (40 inches/minute).

This 1-mm thick fired alumina ceramic plate shows the edge quality achieved by gating the Firestar f201 laser with 800 µs wide pulses at a frequency of 1.2 kHz.