Effect of Laser Beam Conditioning on Fabrication of Micro-Channels in Al2O3 Bio-ceramics Using Nd:YAG Laser

In the present study, laser micro-milling tests were carried out to fabricate micro-channels on Alumina bio-ceramics (Al2O3), using a Q-Switched 30W Nd:YAG pulsed laser. A systematic approach based on a full factorial Design of Experiment (DoE) has been successfully applied with the aim to detect which and how the key input laser process parameters affect the channel dimensional accuracy. The examined process parameters were the laser beam scanning speed, the pulse frequency and the pulse intensity. Optical microscope was used to analyze the channel geometries responses (i.e. channel's top width, bottom width, depth, and taper wall angle). Moreover, mathematical models for predicting the micro-channel geometries are successfully proposed for controlled micro-milling of micro-channels in Al2O3. Results reveal that, the change of scanning speed and laser intensity significantly affected the ablated channel's geometries. Further it is observed that the channel depth and width increase linearly with increasing of laser intensity and decreasing of scanning speed and not much affected by changing of pulse frequency. Finally, the experimental results bear a good agreement with the proposed prediction models.