Laser Drilling

Laser drilling is one of the earliest applications of lasers in materials processing. Output energies of the first ruby laser were often described in terms of the number of razor blades which could be penetrated by the focused laser beam. Laser drilling is most extensively used in the aerospace, aircraft, and automotive industries (Tam et al. 1994; Benes 1996; Giering et al. 1999). The most important application of laser drilling in the aerospace industry is the drilling of a large number of closely spaced effusion holes with small diameter and high quality to improve the cooling capacity of turbine engine components. In addition, laser drilling of diamond drawing dies and gemstones have been extensively used (Nagano 1978; Meijer 2004). The common industrial applications of laser drilling include cooling holes in aircraft turbine blades, optical apertures, flow orifices, and apertures for electron beam instruments (Knowles 2000, Wu et al. 2006).