William Payne reports on the rise of micromachining applications for lasers

Nick Morris gets up close with this intricate application of lasers

Laser micromachining is fast becoming a routine method of fabricating mass produced parts, as well as manufacturing intricately designed components for specialised applications. Laser micromachining is now commonplace in the component manufacturing sector, supplying industries that demand very high precision – such as aerospace, automotive, biomedical, and electronics industries, to name but a few. Lasers can be used for a variety of processes to produce feature sizes in the 1-500µm range, with submicron accuracy.