• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.31-36
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• 2009

In this paper, the laser cutting characteristics of the flexible PCB using high power Nd:YAG UV laser were investigated. A specific FPCB model was selected for the experiment. Test sheets were made, which had equal materials and layer structure to those of the outline (OL) region and the contact pad (CP) region in the FPCB. The experiment is made up of two stages. In the first stage of the experiment, the laser cutting fluence was found, which is the threshold fluence to cut the test sheets completely. The laser cutting fluence of the OL sheet is $1781.26{\sim}1970.16\;J/cm^2$ and that of the CP sheet is $2109.34{\sim}2134.34\;J/cm^2$. In the second stage, cutting performance and its qualities were analyzed by the experiment. The laser cutting performance remained almost unchanged for all laser and process parameter sets. The average cutting width (top side/bottom side) of the OL sheet was $40.45\;{\mu}m/11.52\;{\mu}m$ and that of the CP sheet was $22.14\;{\mu}m/10.93\;{\mu}m$. However, the laser cutting qualities were different according to the parameters. The adjacent region of the cutting line on the OL sheet was carbonized as the beam speed was low and the overlap coefficient was high. The surface quality around the cutting line of the CP sheet was about the same. Carbonization and debris occurred on the surface of the cutting line. As a result of the experiment, the cutting qualities were better as the overlap coefficient was made low and beam speed high. Therefore, the overlap coefficient 2 or 3 is proper for the FPCB laser cutting.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.20-24
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• 2010

High speed cutting processes of rigid flexible printed circuit board by making use of high power UV laser with nano-second pulse width have been proposed and investigated experimentally. Also robust laser cutting system has been designed and developed in order to obtain a good cutting quality of rigid and flexible PCB with multi-layers (2-6 layers). Power controller module developed for ourselves is adapted to control the laser output power in the range less than 1%. The systems show the good performance of cutting speed, cutting width and cutting accuracy, respectively. Especially we have confirmed that the short circuit problem due to the carbonized contamination occurred in cross section of multi-layers by thermal effect of high power laser has been improved largely by using multi-pass cutting process with low power and high speed.