Views: 7 Author: Leapion Publish Time: 07-25-2022 Origin: Leapion
As an important industrial material, glass is used in many industries of the national economy, such as home appliances, bathrooms, decoration, electronics, crafts, optics, construction, automobiles, photovoltaic industries, etc., small optical filters as small as a few microns, notebook computers Flat-panel displays, as large as large-scale glass panels used in large-scale manufacturing in the automotive, photovoltaic, and construction industries.
As a typical brittle material, the glass will bring great difficulties during processing.
The traditional method for glass cutting is to use carbide or diamond tools, and the cutting process is divided into two steps.
First, a diamond tip or carbide grinding wheel is used to create a crack on the glass surface; then mechanical means are used to separate the glass along the crack line.
There are some drawbacks to scribing and cutting with this method.
The removal of material results in the creation of chips, pieces, and micro-cracks that reduce the strength of the cut edge and require an additional cleaning process.
Process-induced deep cracks are usually not perpendicular to the glass surface, as the split lines generated by mechanical forces are generally not perpendicular, and yield loss caused by mechanical forces acting on thin glass is also a negative factor.
Although these defects can be improved by using stress-free glass and further optimization of the process for segmentation.
But it is impossible to completely avoid the systematic conflict between vertical cutting lines and edge chip/crack prevention.
Advances in laser technology have brought solutions to these quality problems.
It is different from conventional mechanical cutting tools, the energy of the laser beam cuts the glass in a non-contact manner.
This energy heats a specified position of the workpiece to make it reach the predefined temperature.
The rapid heating process is followed by rapid cooling, which creates a vertical stress band inside the glass, where a crack without chips or cracks appears.
Since the cracks are only thermally and not mechanically caused, no chips and micro-cracks appear.
The strength of the laser cut edge is stronger than traditional scribe and split methods, and the need for finishing is reduced or not required at all.
In addition, the occurrence of glass fragments can be completely avoided.
For laser cutting, the glass surface is scratched by about 10mm under the action of the heating and subsequent cooling process of the laser beam.
After that, the glass can be divided in the scribed direction.
Because the laser technology does not produce any glass fragments, the burrs and low strengths common to cutting edges are also avoided, and subsequent polishing and grinding steps are no longer necessary.
What's more, the glass processed by this method has up to three times the shatter resistance of glass divided by traditional methods.
For glass thicknesses up to 20mm, it is possible to cut the whole piece even in one step.
Dividing and subsequent polishing, sanding, rinsing, etc. steps are no longer required.
The strength of the cut edge can be measured by the standardized four-point bending test from DIN-EN 843-1.
A piece of glass is fixed on two rollers, and the other two rollers on the upper surface of the glass are used to generate the required bending force under which the glass can be split into two parts.
The test is repeated approximately 100 times to obtain suitable reliable statistics on the likelihood of segmentation.
In most cases, laser cutting is the choice for high-volume glass cutting processing.
Its advantages are high speed, high precision, and simple parameter setting.
However, where many different lines are cut and the processing time is sufficient, monolithic cutting is a more attractive method due to its dry cooling and no additional cutting steps.
In both cases, a high-quality cut edge is produced.
It can be seen that if laser cutting glass is used, it can completely save time and improve the processing quality.
Transplanting a new and mature technology into a high-volume production line for processing high-tech products is no easy task.
From the customer's point of view, before implementation, the technology must be an automated, reliable solution that is not only well-proven but also economical.
In practice, the application of innovative technologies is only effective in two situations: the introduction of new products requires new means of production to achieve innovative features or reduce production costs by reducing processing steps, or when existing production encounters economic pressures. Huge improvements in production methods to ease.
In the flat panel display industry, it took five years for the promotion of laser cutting technology to find its place in the production line, provided that it has undergone thousands of hours of application verification on many processing lines.
Now, It is generally considered for the production of new products where there is a risk of glass breakage, or in the electronics industry for the manufacture of glassed communication mobile products, or other products with fragile parts containing thin glass, such as sensors, touchpads or glass case.
Machining usually takes place in a dust-free environment, as in the biochemical industry, as these are very sensitive to particulates produced by traditional cutting or grinding steps.
For example, substrate materials covered with DNA codes (biochemical barcodes) or materials cut into sheets by laser are used for product testing.
For laser cutting technology, the most potential application industries are the home appliance industry, bathroom industry, solar energy industry, and automobile industry.
