In the process of the innovation of smart phone appearance materials, glass materials have been welcomed by manufacturers due to their various advantages, such as variable shapes, good impact resistance, and controllable costs. However, its fragile characteristics bring many problems to the processing process, such as cracks and rough edges. In addition, the special-shaped cutting of the earpiece, front camera, fingerprint film and other positions also puts forward higher requirements on the processing technology. How to solve the processing problems of glass materials and improve product yield has become the common goal of the industry, and it is urgent to promote the innovation of glass cutting technology.
Traditional glass cutting processes include knife wheel cutting and CNC grinding and cutting. The glass cut by the cutter wheel has large edges and rough edges, which will greatly affect the strength of the glass. In addition, the yield rate of glass cut by the cutter wheel is low, and the material utilization rate is low. After cutting, a complex process post-processing is required. When the cutter wheel performs special-shaped cutting, the speed and accuracy will be greatly reduced. Some special-shaped full screens cannot be cut with the cutter wheel because the corner is too small. CNC has higher precision than the cutter wheel, the accuracy is ≤30μm, and the edge chipping is smaller than the cutter wheel, about 40μm. The disadvantage is that it is slow.
The traditional laser cutting glass is the ablation mechanism. The glass is melted or even gasified by the focused high-energy density laser, and the residual slag is blown away by the high-pressure auxiliary gas. Because the glass is fragile, the high overlap rate spot will accumulate excessive heat on the glass, causing the glass to crack. Therefore, the laser cannot use the high overlap rate spot to perform a cut. Usually, a galvanometer is used for high-speed scanning, and the glass is scanned one by one. For layer removal, the general cutting speed is less than 1mm/s. With the development of laser technology, lasers have also appeared in glass cutting. The laser cutting speed is fast, the precision is high, the incision has no burrs and is not limited by the shape, and the chipping is generally less than 80μm.
In recent years, ultrafast lasers (or ultrashort pulse lasers) have achieved rapid development, especially in glass cutting applications. InnoLaser has developed a customized module specially designed for brittle material processing. With InnoLaser's ultrafast laser, it can cut brittle materials better and faster, and further reduce the cost.
