Laser Machining Application, Status and Development

In a water-jet guided laser, the beam enters a nozzle and travels inside a thin, high-pressure water column. The water and the beam stay together because the refractive index difference between water and air keeps the light bouncing along the jet, much like a fiber optic. The jet also pushes melt and debris out of the cut as it goes.

The nozzle is the wearing part. A typical water jet diameter sits between 25 μm and 100 μm, and the working distance can run several centimeters without defocusing. That long stand-off is the main reason the process handles curved and stepped surfaces that a conventional focusing lens cannot track.

Because the water cools the cut zone continuously, the heat-affected zone stays narrow, usually in the single-digit micrometer range on thin metals. Cuts come out clean on both entry and exit, with little dross and no need for a separate deburring pass on most thin sheets.

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  Cooling in the cutWater carries heat away as the kerf forms, so distortion stays low on thin stock.
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  Long working distanceA stable jet lets the head follow 3D contours without re-focusing.
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  Parallel kerf wallsTaper is small compared with a gas-assisted laser on the same thickness.

The strongest fit is thin, hard or heat-sensitive material: semiconductor wafers, stents, fuel injector filters, battery current collectors, and thin aerospace alloys. A 0.5 mm stainless sheet with 50 μm holes is routine. So is dicing a silicon wafer without a recast layer that would need etching afterward.

Medical tube cutting is another steady application. Stent and catheter tubes need round holes with clean edges and no thermal cracking, and the water jet suppresses both. Titanium and cobalt-chromium alloys cut without the oxidation that shows up when you use a gas laser in air.

In new energy work, the process cuts copper and aluminum foils and tabs where a conventional laser would leave a melted bead. The gain is not speed. It is edge quality and the absence of a post-process cleaning step, which matters when the part goes into a sealed cell.

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  SemiconductorsWafer dicing and via drilling without recast or micro-cracking.
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  Medical tubingStent, hypotube and catheter cuts with clean round edges.
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  New energyFoil and tab cutting on copper and aluminum without dross.

Thickness is the first wall. Above roughly 1 mm to 2 mm in steel, cutting speed drops sharply and the kerf starts to taper. If your part is a 10 mm plate with a through slot, a fiber laser or a mill will beat the water-jet guided route on cost per part.

Blind features are the second wall. The process drills through. It does not create a controlled-depth pocket with a flat floor, and it will not cut a thread or a keyway. Those features belong on a machining center, and mixing the two processes on one part is normal.

Cost structure matters too. A water-jet guided system carries nozzle wear and water treatment costs, so it pays off on features that milling cannot reach economically: hundreds of micro-holes, brittle wafers, or heat-sensitive alloys. For a single 3 mm hole in an aluminum bracket, it does not.

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  Thickness ceilingSpeed and taper worsen quickly beyond about 1–2 mm in steel.
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  Through features onlyNo blind pockets, threads or counterbores.
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  Cost per featureBest value at high hole counts or fragile material.

Laser-cut edges usually need no secondary deburring, but they do need inspection. We check hole diameter, taper and the heat-affected zone on a sample before a run starts, then monitor the same features during production. Results go into a report on request.

When a part needs both micro-holes and milled pockets, the order matters. Cut the laser features first on thin stock, then clamp the part for milling if the geometry allows. Cutting after milling risks a burr on the machined face that is harder to remove.

For prototypes, laser cutting and 5-axis milling sit well together. GreatLight runs 16 simultaneous 5-axis centers and 127 high-precision CNC machines across 7,600 m² in Dongguan and a plant in Singapore, so a design that mixes micro-holes with machined pockets stays in one supply chain instead of three.

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  InspectionHole size, taper and heat-affected zone checked on the first part.
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  SequenceLaser first on thin stock, then mill if the clamp allows.
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  One supplierLaser, milling and finishing handled under one quality system.