- The surface roughness of the end product after polishing
It depends which adequate laser with which parameters to chose.
The laser wavelength also affect to the roughness of the surface. You have to find out which material has a less reflection in your laser wavelength. I have published a paper in this case. Please read my article here:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8083011/
if you have any further question, do not hesitate to contact.
Polishing using lasers are mostly trending in medical and industrial sector due to the high surface smoothness when compared with conventional polishing techniques. Also specific areas can be polished using lasers such as micro channels. If the surface smoothness of the material is initially high then laser polishing shows less effect as there is not much distance between the peaks and the valleys. Another major challenge faced during laser polishing is the crack formation when the process is carried out in atmospheric condition as oxidation occurs in the metal surface. Using an inert gas chamber will be the solution for this problem.
Dear Soffarina Mohd Soffie,
Laser polishing of metals is based on the remelting of a thin surface layer by means of laser radiation (typically near infra-red radiation ~1064 nm). In the molten phase, surface roughness is smoothed due to surface tension and the material solidifies in a smoothed state. Compared to conventional grinding and polishing, laser polishing can also be understood as a multi-step process. Successive process steps are carried out, starting with the smoothing of macrostructures, e.g. milling grooves or eroding structures (macropolishing) up to the spatially resolved reduction of microstructures and thus increase of the degree of gloss (micro-polishing). During laser macro polishing, usually a thin surface boundary layer of approx. 20 μm to 100 μmis remelted using continuous laser radiation. In the liquid state, the macrostructures on the surface are smoothed under the influence of surface tension, if the process parameters are appropriately selected, thus reducing roughness. The reduction of roughness during laser macro polishing has a particular effect on conventional roughness values such as Ra, Rz etc.. Laser micro polishing (LμP) with pulsed laser radiation is a combination of remelting and evaporation of microstructures. LμP achieves a significantly lower melting depth (
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