New Applications and Discoveries of Laser Technology in Ceramic Processing

1. Application of Laser Heating Assisted Processing

Heat cutting has a history of nearly a century so far, with heating methods including electric heating, flame heating, plasma heating, laser heating, and special light source heating. In the early days, electric heating or flame heating was often used.

2 Laser assisted turning and grinding of ceramic materials

At room temperature, PCD or PVD tools can only be used to cut ceramic products on the lathe. Due to the impact vibration caused by pores and defects during processing, the tool is prone to edge collapse or abnormal wear, and the tool life is extremely low. Therefore, almost no one uses this method to process ceramics.

Therefore, in order to fundamentally change the current status of ceramic processing, there must be new breakthroughs in processing methods. The key is to change the hard brittle characteristics of ceramic materials during processing, that is, to change brittle cutting to plastic cutting. The general heating method is limited by the properties of ceramic materials, such as the insulation of ceramics, which makes it irrelevant to electric heating. The flame heating temperature is low and the energy density is insufficient.

Plasma heating poses certain difficulties for ceramic materials. Due to the non-conductivity of ceramic workpieces, they cannot directly serve as cathodes, and other methods can only be used for arc ignition. If non transfer arc heating is used, the heat flux density is insufficient. Processing ceramic coatings is barely achievable, but for structural ceramics, it is still necessary to significantly increase the power density of the plasma source.

Laser heating of Electroceramics has the following advantages:

(1) The power density is as high as 108-1010W ∙ cm-2, and the heating speed is extremely fast, which is enough to achieve plastic processing under high-speed cutting conditions for any ceramic material;

(2) The ceramic disk laser spot can be focused to the micrometer level, with a small heat affected zone;

(3) The output power is adjustable, and the heating temperature and spot diameter can be adjusted according to different workpiece materials.

3 Laser detection of machined surfaces

When advanced ceramics are applied to industrial sectors such as aviation, aerospace, and national defense, there is a high demand for surface quality, especially to ensure its strength, it is necessary to minimize surface microcracks, cracks, and other defects as much as possible. In order to ensure processing quality, it is also necessary to achieve online detection of its surface roughness. Moreover, because the surface roughness is closely related to tool wear, fracture and Self-oscillation of the machining system, the grinding conditions can be verified by measuring the surface roughness online to prevent

Prevent surface vibration marks, burns, cracks, etc. from appearing on the parts. Online detection is a major feature of laser detection systems, where surface roughness can be measured without removing the workpiece from the machine tool. This method can also be used to remove the adhesion on the surface of the grinding wheel. The basic principle is to evaporate and remove the adhesion on the surface of the grinding wheel through laser irradiation. Choosing reasonable process parameters can ensure that the substrate and abrasive particles are not affected while evaporating the adhesive. In addition, it can also detect the high-speed grinding wheel in real-time online

The abrasive wear condition greatly prolongs the durability and lifespan of diamond grinding wheels. With the development of science and technology, laser detection technology will be widely applied.

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