Process Date: October 2000

0.03"-thick quartz, cut with a 50-watt laser at 20"/minute. (The edge on the right-hand side was cut by a mechanical cutting method).

Cutting regular window-pane (soda-lime) glass is tricky, requiring a very specialized system to achieve high quality results. With quartz or fused silica, however, it's a different story. The high purity, homogeneity, and low thermal expansion coefficient of quartz make this a very straightforward material to cut with a CO2  laser.

The picture above shows part of an intricate pattern cut out of 0.03"-thick quartz, demonstrating the laser's effectiveness in fine cutting operations. The thin filament in the top left of the photo is only 0.008" (200 microns) at its narrowest point. In this application, the polarization of the laser was a factor in its outcome, since the consistency of the cuts was extremely important. A linearly polarized laser, without the addition of an external polarizing mirror, would have resulted in inconsistent cuts and therefore, distortion to the original pattern. Synrad's randomly polarized 48-5 model 50-watt laser achieved consistent, quality cuts without the requirement of additional optics.

The optical absorption spectrum of quartz makes it ideally suited for processing with a CO₂ laser. Marking, welding, drilling and machining of quartz, in addition to cutting, is possible with Synrad lasers.