Investigation of the polymer material perforation time: comparison between two fiber laser wavelengths

This study investigated the perforation time of polyamide 6.6 using fiber lasers at two different wavelengths: 1070 and 1943 nm. The novelty of this research lies in the comparison of perforation times at equivalent laser irradiances on the polymer sample with two different colors of polyamide 6.6: natural and black. The results revealed that, at comparable irradiance levels and beam diameters, the 1943 nm laser source perforated the polyamide 6.6 sample faster than the 1070 nm laser source. The difference in perforation time was found to be significantly higher for natural-colored polyamide 6.6 compared to black-colored polyamide 6.6. These findings suggest that, for material processing of polyamide 6.6, especially in terms of perforation, the use of 2 μm laser sources should be privileged over 1 μm laser sources.