Efficient Ultrashort Pulsed Laser Processing by Dynamic Spatial Light Modulator Beam Shaping for Industrial Use

We report on the effect of different transversal beam shapes on the efficiency of ablation processes and the resulting surface characteristics. A possibility to efficiently apply ultrashort pulsed lasers with high average power is beam shaping. By using a cooled reflective based liquid crystal spatial light modulator to generate different spot distributions, it is possible to spatially allocate the available power to avoid excessive high fluences. In our experiments, we determine the optimal fluence to ablate the maximum volume per watt to be in the range of 0.2-0.4 J/cm(2). Based on this fluence, we increase the number of spots from one to a maximum of twenty to ablate steel in a multilayer scanning-based process. In this context, we examine the influence of different separation distances between the spots on the ablation efficiency and roughness. Subsequently to these investigations, we develop an efficient roughing process with higher ablation rates and a nearly constant roughness.