INTRODUCTION:

In the vast field of machining time and money are the matters of concern. This method
uses the laser to scribe wafers along the desired separation line, after which the scribed
wafers are immersed in an ultrasonic cell and broken along the scribed lines by ultrasonic
energy .In recent years the laser scribing technique has been applied in the integrated
circuit industry for cutting ceramic substrates .The complete of scribing process requires
either that the continuous laser evaporates the material to form the deep groove or that the
impulse laser drills the serial blind holes at the depths of 1\3 to 1\2 of the substrate
thickness .For this it is necessary to concentrate the laser energy on a narrow line, with
the workpiece on the focal plane . The scribed substrates are broken along the scribed
line by applying a mechanical force induced from the cracking roller.

EVOLUTION AND WORKING:

One of the important laser cutting method that has great potential for machining of
ceramic substrates is the CONTROLLED FRACTURE TECHNIQUE proposed by
“LOMLEY” .The laser energy absorbed in a local area produces a mechanical stress that
will cause the material to separate along the path of the laser beam. The material
separation is similar to a crack extension and the fracture controllable. LOMLEY
successfully applied this technique in laser cutting of brittle materials such as alumina
ceramic substrates and glass by using aCO2 laser. The laser power required for this
method is less than that for cutting by laser evaporation, laser scribing and the cutting
speed is much higher. The technology of laser cutting with controlled fracture has great
advantage in the cutting of brittle material such as glasses it is a single step process and
no mechanical snapping is required because the cutting edges are free of chipping and
microcracks, the edges need not be further cleaned grinded. GROVE proposed a related
method of controlled fracture for cutting glass, which the cutting speed is higher. The
crack extension in laser cutting by controlled fracture technique is due to the thermal
stress induced from the laser heat .In order to ensure accurate splitting; it is essential that
the stress field must be symmetrical with crack. CHUI noted that the controlled fracture
technique is not quite successful for fast cutting speeds and long cutting lengths, and
attempted to increase the speed with higher power only results in losing control of crack
propagation.
Recently, KONDRATENKO, UNGER and WITTENBECHER have further investigated
the use of lower power laser to separate glass without melting the material, an additional
water jet coolant is applied to produce tensile stress along the cutting path.
KONDRATENKO developed a method of splitting nonmetallic materials; especially
glass based on the idea of controlled fracture. Here the surface of the glass plate is heated
by CO2 laser and heated zone is subjected to local cooling to form a blind crack .The
cooling is in the form of jet of water entrained with air .The method can increase the
cutting speed and accuracy, and also can control the depth, shape and the angle of cut
face formed by the crack. UNGER and WITTENBECHER proposed a system for cutting
glass in a single step process, which combines a laser beam and a quenching jet. The
travelling laser spot is closely followed by a quenching jet, which consists of a nozzle
through which a cold air water jet is directed at glass surface. This rapid quench creates a
tensile stress along the line defined by the sweeping of the laser spot.

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 In this paper, we investigate the fracture mechanism of the laser cutting with controlled
fracture. When the moving laser beam is focused on the material surface, a shallow
groove is formed by evaporative removal of material .The heat generation by laser
induces a transient temperature distribution and a time dependent stress field .The
fracture grows in a stable fashion along the moving path of the laser spot .The
temperature field and the stress field for the 3 dimensional simulation are obtained by the
finite element calculation. The mechanism by which the fracture is controlled is proposed
from the analysis of the stress field in this paper crack detection technique using the
image processing method proposed by “TSAI” and “LIOU” is applied to measure the
position of the extending crack tip during the laser cutting process .In the present work,
the machining parameters such as laser spot size, cutting speed, specimen size and the
cutting quality are discussed. It is also found that the defocused laser beam is preferred
for laser cutting and the larger spot size, the better the cutting quality and the higher
cutting speed ..

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LASER CUTING SYSTEM AND SPECIMEN:

The laser cutting system as shown in fig is composed of continuos wattage CO2 laser, an
XYZ positioning table, and a computer .The laser beam moves along the upper surface
of the workpiece mounted on the positioning table. The wavelength of the CO2 laser is
10.6 um and the min. dia. Of the focused spot of the CO2 laser is 127um.The focal plane
of the CO2 laser is placed at a defocused distance 2mm in which the dia. Of the laser is
about .18mm .The experimental specimen in this paper are alumina ceramic substrates
produced by the Kyocera company Japan

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EXPERIMENTS OF LASER CUTTING WITH
CONTROLLED FRACTURE:

In order to understand the mechanism of symmetrical cutting with controlled fracture

technique, the cross sections along the cutting path are investigated. Using the CO 2 laser
to cut an alumina ceramic substrate the laser beam transverse a distance but does not go
through the material completely, then the cutting is stopped. The separation of the
specimen is similar to the crack propagation along the cutting path, but the crack is
invisible to the naked eye .In order to distinguish the different fracture regions, the dark
ink is painted along the cutting path to he final position of the laser spot, the ink will
penetrate to the separated surfaces. Then the specimen is stripped in 2 pieces along the
cutting path. The dark ink only exists in the fracture surface induced from the controlled
fracture. Photographs of the specimen from the cutting speed of 2mm\s to 10mm\s and
the laser output power 30Ware shown. Photograph shows following 3 regions
1. heat affected region due to laser heat
2. the controlled fracture region throughout the thickness
3. the fracture region
The dark region indicates the heat affected region and the lighter region indicates the
controlled fracture region. It is found that the depths of the heat-affected region are
.2mm to.1mm for cutting speeds of 2mm\s and 10mm\s. Some of the laser heat is
absorbed to melt the material and decrease the bonding strength, and then the material
will resolidify and induce a primary groove, which closely follows the laser spot path.
The controlled fracture is due to the groove existing in the affected region extending
from up to down after the passage of the laser

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NON UNIFORMLY EXTENDING CRACK:
In order to understand the crack propagation during the laser cutting with controlled
fracture the image processing system of crack detection proposed by TSAI and LIOU
is applied to obtain the crack image continuously during the laser cutting. ACCD
camera is placed below the specimen, the images of the crack tip are grabbed by
camera and computer and analyzed by image processing program .The distance
between the crack tip and the laser spot can be measured by using the crack detection

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system .For cutting condition of laser power 30Watts and cutting speeds
2mm\s,4mm\s and 10mm\s, the distance from the crack tip to laser spot are obtained
from the detection method as shown. The crack leaves behind the laser spot. The
interesting phenomenon is that crack propagation is not at the constant speed. The
distance between the crack tip and the laser spot varies from 2.2mm to 2.8mm for the
cutting speed of 10mm\s, varies from 1.3mm to 2mm for the cutting speed4mm\sand
varies from 0.2mm to 1.5mm for cutting speed 2mm\sec

FRACTURE EXTENSION MODEL OF ASSYMETRICAL

CUTTING:

1.STRAIGHT LINE CUTTING:

The stress state at the crack tip is not pure mode I for the asymmetrical cutting. If the
stress is not symmetrical with the crack, the actual cutting fracture trajectory will
deviate from the desired cutting path.

2.CURVE CUTTING:
In the curve cutting process, the cutting is symmetrical .The crack tip behaves as the
mixed mode stress condition and the crack growth does not exactly follow the path of
laser spot. Thus the actual fracture trajectory will deviate from the applied path of the
laser spot. A sine curve cutting of the alumina ceramic substrate is shown in fig.
Indicating that the laser beam moves to the turning point of curve line, but the crack
tip lags a short distance behind the laser spot at the same time the laser beam begins
to turn a direction tangential to the primary cutting path, resulting in a mixed mode
stress intensity factor, which could make the crack tip deviate from the primary
cutting path. The wavelength half is 90mm and wave magnitude is 14mm for the sine
curve cut .The max. Deviation is about 1.9mm .The root mean square deviation is
0.8mm. The crack tip begins turning to the curved path too early to follow the desired
path, and the deviation is severe if the cutting speed is higher.

3.RIGHT ANGLE CUTTING:

Using the laser cutting technique with controlled fracture to cut aright angle, the
actual fracture trajectory will deviate from the desired right angle and become around
angle. The deviation is due to lag of the separated crack tip from the laser spot, so that
when the laser spot arise at the turning point, the crack tip has not yet reached the
turning point at the instant the laser beam turns to the perpendicular direction and the
crack tip will also turn to the same direction. Because the crack tip has not yet
reached the turning point of the right angle, so the actual fracture trajectory deviates
severely from the desired right angle.

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CUTTING SPEED, SPECIMEN WIDTH AND OTHER
PARAMETERS:

In order to investigate the relation of the cutting speed, laser power and width of the
specimen, three sizes alumina ceramic substrate are selected as specimens the
specimen sizes are wide 101.6 x 101.6 x 0.635 mm3 medium 50.8x 101.6
x0.635mm3 and narrow 25.4 x 101.6 x 0.635 mm3. The experimental results of the
cutting speed and the required laser power are shown in fig .The symbols represent
the cutting speed and required laser power of which the substrate can be separated
.The solid lines represent the max, cutting speed, which can be reached for the
different laser power outputs .It can be seen that if the specimen is narrow, then the
max. Cutting speed is higher, the Stress State and the extending speed of the crack are
strongly affected by the specimen size.

CUTING SPEED AND LASER SPOT SIZE:

In the laser cutting operation with controlled fracture, the specimen must be placed
below the focal plane .The spot size is min. in the focal plane. If the distance between
the specimen and the focus lens is longer than then focal length of the lens, the spot
size will be the enlarged and the cutting speed is affected by the spot size. The
alumina ceramic substrates with thickness 0.635-mm are cut with variable spot size
and with constant laser power output of 30Watt-.The dia. Of the laser spot equals the
product of the distance from the focal plane and the diverged angle .The max. Cutting
speed that can be reached for variable laser spot sizes are shown in fig. For larger spot
sizes, the cutting speed is higher. For the larger spot sizes, the laser energy is diverged
to a larger area, so less material will melt and be evaporated, so that the most heat
energy can be absorbed to induce higher thermal stress. Strong light occurs in the
cutting process for the small laser spot size, but for the large spot size, the laser
energy is not as concentrated, so local burning in the specimen does not occur.

CUTTING QUALITY:
The surface quality of laser cutting with controlled fracture is very smooth and has
very few little defects. Photographs obtained by scanned electron microscopy of the
cutting surface from the controlled fracture, laser scribing, and conventional laser
cutting are shown in fig crossection of controlled fracture is under the cutting
conditions of laser output 20 W and cutting speed 15mm\sec. The result in max.
Surface roughness RMax =26µm .The specimen of laser scribing is performed by using
the pulsed CO2 laser. The conventional laser cutting is 40Watt with cutting speed
1mm\sec. In the 2 methods of controlled fracture and laser scribing, the surface are
much better than the conventional laser cutting by evaporating the material.

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UNSTABLE FRACTURE:
In some conditions of special stress distribution, the material separation becomes
unstable and cutting fails. A specimen containing a small hole with a dia. Of 0.2mm is
shown in fig where the main crack extension is influenced by the small hole and
becomes unstable. After cutting 20mm length the main crack linked with the hole and
ruptured suddenly. These unstable fractures occur under the condition of tensile stress
or shear stress of the mixed mode condition. For the controlled stable fracture the
stress near the cracktip is compressive and the crack propagation is silent. But in the
final stage of cutting, when the crack tip propagates close to the edge of the specimen

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CONCLUSION:
Laser cutting technique of controlled fracture is successfully applied for the cutting of
alumina ceramic substrate .The cutting process is divided into three stages .In the first
stage the fracture is initiated due to tensile stress .In second stage the stable growth of
fracture takes place when stress behaves comparatively while laser passing, this stress
is then relaxed and tensile stress is induced in the substrate. In the third stage the
unstable fracture takes place. The factors affecting the process are distance between
the crack tip and laser spot that affects stress, cutting speed, which is greatly affected
by specimen size .The efficiency of the process depends highly on the specimen size,
laser used and its range, type of the specimen and the type of cut to be obtained.
Various types of cuts can be obtained by this process, so can be one of the widely
used advanced manufacturing techniques. Mainly used in Japan now a days .The
process drawbacks are that high perfection requiring products cannot be
manufactured, as the expected tolerance level is more. High cost investment for laser
and that having tendency of lasers constricts the prospects. In near future it’s expected
that drawbacks will be overcome by further development in the process, which will
widen the heights soared by the laser wings

REFERRENCES:
1. D.K.PATEL & J.D.BAKER - METHOD FOR LASER SCRIBING
2. GROVE , WRIGHT & HANMER – CUTTING OF GLASS WITH LASER
3. E.H & LIOU - THE CUTTING EDGE OF LASER
4. JOURNAL OF MANUFACTURING SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY – AUG’03
, MAY’03

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Abstract:
In the increasing and vast field of manufacturing in less time we have to go at a speed of
supersonic jet. In this paper we will understand fracture mechanism using laser cutting
with controlled fracture. Laser cutting using the controlled fracture technique has great
potential to be used for the machining of brittle materials. In this technique, the applied
laser energy produces a mechanical stress that causes the material to separate along the
moving path of laser beam .The material separation is similar to a crack extension and the
fracture growth is controllable. The laser heat first induces compressive stress around the
laser spot. After the passage of the laser beam, the compressive stress is relaxed, and then
a residual tensile stress is induced. The stable separation of the brittle material is due to
the local residual tensile stress. The experimental material in this study are alumina
ceramic and the laser source is CO2 laser. The relationship between the laser power,
cutting speed, diameter of the laser spot, and specimen geometry are obtained from the
experimental analysis, and the phenomenon are also explained from the result of the
stress analysis. This method is a single step process and no mechanical snapping is
required. Because the cutting edges are free of chipping and micro cracks, the edge need
no further cleaning or grinding. The paper discusses the use of lower power laser to
separate glass without melting the material. An additional water jet coolant is applied to
produce tensile stress along the cutting path. This improvement of the controlled fracture
method has been recognized as having good prospects of fracture use. We investigate the
fracture mechanism of laser cutting with controlled fracture when the moving laser beam
is focused on material surface; a shallow groove is formed by evaporative removal of
material. The heat generation by laser induces a transient temperature distribution and a
time dependent stress field. The fracture grows in a stable fashion along the moving path
of the laser spot . It is clear by the study that mechanism has wide prospects in the future
and will be amongst the leading manufacturing technique.

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 ADVANCED MANUFACTURING TECHNIQUES

LASER CUTTING WITH CONTROLLED

FRACTURE

BAPURAO DESHMUKH COLLEGE OF

ENGINEERING

PRESENTED BY:
ASHWINI PARAGE - VIII SEM PRODUCTION
SANCHITA PARADKAR- VIII SEM PRODUCTION

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