Drilling on Fibre-Glass Composite using CO2 Laser

Fibre-glass composite has been increasingly used in automotive, aerospace and electronics industries, where hole making on this material is a major process. In this paper, non-traditional machining method was employed to drill the fibre-glass composite sheet of 2 mm in thickness having four layers...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: M. M., Noor, T. T., Mon, K., Kadirgama, M. S. M., Sani, M. R. M., Rejab
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Language:English
Published: 2009
Subjects:
Online Access:http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/1413/1/2009_P_ICAME09_M.M.Noor_T.T.Mon-Conference-.pdf
http://umpir.ump.edu.my/id/eprint/1413/
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Summary:Fibre-glass composite has been increasingly used in automotive, aerospace and electronics industries, where hole making on this material is a major process. In this paper, non-traditional machining method was employed to drill the fibre-glass composite sheet of 2 mm in thickness having four layers of glass-fibre with orientation <0, 90, 0, 90>. The machining setup consists of computer-controlled laser source and air supply by a compressor that acts as assist gas for cooling. The type of laser source was CO2 with a maximum power of 30W. The machining parameters under consideration were laser power and pulse duration. A total of 12 holes were drilled varying laser power and pulse duration. Laser power was varied from 15 to 25W while pulse duration from 2 to 5 minute. Laser-drilled holes were investigated under optical microscope. The hole quality was evaluated with the hole size, hole geometry, burn mark and heat-affected zone. Hole quality were then compared for each parameter combination. It was found that the laser power had predominantly affected the quality of the hole in fibre-glass composite material during laser-drilling.