Drilling with fiber-transmitted, visible lasers

摘要

High power and radiance copper-vapor laser technology developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory shows great promise for many materials processing tasks. The authors recently transmitted the visible light produced by these lasers through fiber optics to perform hole drilling experiments. They found the tolerances on the hole circulatory and cylindricity to be excellent when compared to that produced by conventional optics. This technique lends itself to many applications that are difficult to perform when using conventional optics, including robotic manipulation and hole drilling in non-symmetric parts.