Ultra-Thin Glass Hybrid Cutting by Ultrashort Pulsed Laser Robot

We report on a hybrid cutting method of ultra-thin glass cutting using an ultrashort pulsed laser robot system.An ultrashort pulsed laser is fixed on the elongation of one axis of a six-axes articulated industrial robot.The laser beam is guided by mirrors along the robot axes into a 2D galvanometer scanner with a telecentric F-Theta lens, the latter being fixed on the last robot axis.The system due to its high flexibility expands ultrashort pulsed laser processing to a large-scale area micromachining toll with true three-dimension capabilities.Furthermore, the combined movement of scanner and robot, here specifically referred to as hybrid cutting movement, extends the system's overall processing abilities.In an experimental study of cutting ultra-thin glass D263, scanner speed as well as laser pulse duration are varied for a continuous robot movement speed at 20 mms -1 .The quality of the ultra-thin glass cutting is evaluated in terms of minimal glass chipping and maximum flexural strength of the cut specimen.Applying a three-line scan trajectory, both quality aspects are found to be optimized for a pulse duration of 7 ps and the scan speed of 700 mms -1 .To highlight the potential of this new hybrid and true 3D ultra-thin glass cutting, a rectangular is cut from a bent glass sample.