Published : 2015-03-30

Fabrication of polymer microcomponents using CO2 laser melting technique

Abstract

A new method of laser melting molding to produce high-efficiency and high-quality polymer microcomponents was proposed. Numerical simulation was used to analyze the temperature changes of polymer melt during the laser irradiation process. An orthogonal experiment was also employed to investigate the factors influencing molding accuracy. The molding experiments were conducted on molds with various degrees of roughness, and the surface quality of the molded pieces was tested. The simulation analysis and experimental results showed that the laser power plays a critical role in improving the repetition accuracy. The next factors are irradiation time and mold temperature, followed by molding force. Optimized technological parameters (1.2 W of laser power, 6 mm of laser beam width, 6 s irradiation time, 150 N molding force, and 80 °C mold temperature) were applied to obtain a molded pieces with high repetition accuracy and a microstructure dimensional deviation of less than 1 µm. Using a mold with lower surface roughness provides that we can obtain a molded piece with lower roughness, the roughness difference between the mold and the molded piece was less than 0.012 µm.


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Tan, W. S., Zhou, J. Z., Huang, S., Zhu, W. L., & Meng, X. K. (2015). Fabrication of polymer microcomponents using CO2 laser melting technique. Polimery, 60(3), 192-198. https://doi.org/10.14314/polimery.2015.192