Construction of laser-assisted crackless machining for polybenzimidazole:

Optimization of laser irradiation for orthogonal cutting

Abstract

Current machining methods for polybenzimidazole (PBI) plastics produce a large number of fine cracks that reduce the strength of the machined surface. To reduce the cracking caused by milling, prior research focused on the cutting temperature of the workpiece and machining at about 700 K, the glass transition temperature for PBI. This produced a good crack-free machined surface, but it required a high cutting speed of 40 m/s to maintain the temperature, which is too fast for general machine tools. Here, we present a practical combined cutting method, using laser-assisted machining to reduce the cutting speed.