Swirling Gas Jet-Assisted Laser Trepanning for a Galvanometer-Scanned CO2 Laser

Abstract

Laser-drilled hole arrays are part of an important field that aim to improve efficiency without affecting the quality of laser-drilled holes. In this paper, a swirling gas jet was implemented to assist with laser trepanning for a galvanometer scanned CO2 laser. The proposed swirling gas jet is based on laser trepanning. This swirling gas jet nozzle was composed of four inlet tubes to produce the flow of the vortex. Then, the plume particles were excluded, and spatter on the surface of the workpiece decreased. Thus, this approach can mitigate the problem of overcooling. This study manipulated the appropriate parameter settings, which were simulated by computational fluid dynamics software ANSYS CFX. The proposed swirling gas jet can be used with galvanometer-based scanner systems to keep the laser beam from interference by spatter. In addition, a hollow position of the vortex was achieved by using the four inlet tubes, which resulted in pressure asymmetry in the nozzle and velocity distribution on the surface of the workpiece. The experiment verified that the depth of processing could be enhanced by 110% when trepanning at a scanning speed of 30 mm/s, and that the removal of volume could be enhanced by 71% in trepanning at a diameter of 1 mm by using a swirl assistant compared with a non-assisted condition. Furthermore, the material removal rate of the swirling jet increases when the machining area of the galvanometer-based scanner is larger.

Keywords

• laser drilling
• laser trepanning
• galvanometer-based scanner systems
• swirling gas jet