Laser Ablation Process Competency to Fabricate Microchannels in Titanium Alloy

Abstract

Laser ablation is one of the competent machining processes to fabricate microfeatures in variety of engineering materials. This study has been progressed to evaluate the process capability of generating microchannels of various sizes (50 × 50 µm, 100 × 100 µm, 200 × 100 µm, and 1000 × 500 µm) in titanium alloy (Ti6Al4V) using Nd:YAG laser. Channel's top width, bottom width, depth, and taperness are examined as the four process responses against three laser based parameters to the naming of laser intensity, repetition rate, and scan speed. All the geometrical dimensions are measured through photographic snapshots of SEM of each fabricated channel. The results reveal that the selection of channel size is critical to achieve the desired machining geometries. Wider sized channels (such as 200 × 100 and 500 × 1000 µm) are experienced as more flexible to be generated than narrower sized channels (50 × 50 and 100 × 100 µm). The precise parametric combination is the key to realize more tight dimensional enormities with respect to the targeted machining elements. The most appropriate parametric combinations that can generate the respectable results are explored and applied for machining of different channel sizes.