• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.74-81
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• 2019

This study reports the CW $CO_2$ laser scribing of soda lime glass. In this study, scribing experiments are carried out at different laser powers, scan speeds, and focal positions to investigate the effect of the process parameters on the interaction characteristics between a laser beam and glass. In particular, the interaction characteristics are analyzed and described with the input laser energy per unit length. According to the experimental results, the damage threshold for the glass surface was found to exist between 0.072 and 0.08 J/mm. The input laser energy in this region induced partial melting of the surface and grain-shaped cracks. These cracks tended to increase as the input laser energy increased. At the laser input energy larger than 1 J/mm, a huge crack propagating along the scan direction was produced, and the volume below the scribed area was fully melted. The growth of this crack finally resulted in the complete cutting of the glass at the input laser energy above 8 J/mm. It was found that both the width and depth of the scribed line increased with increasing input laser energy. For the beam focusing at the rear surface, the width of the scribed line varied irregularly. This could be ascribed to the increased asymmetry of the beam intensity distribution when the laser beam was focused at the rear surface. Under this condition, a large burr was only produced on one side of the scribed line.