Parametric Influences on Heat Affected Zone in Micro-channel Milling Process of Zirconia Ceramic

Abstract

Zirconia, a bio-ceramic, is widely utilized in bioengineering, biomedical implants, dentistry, and the automotive industry due to high hardness, excellent wear resistance, etc. However, it is difficult to attain micro features on zirconia utilizing a laser machining system for the aforesaid properties. The paper deals with the study of the Heat Affected Zone (HAZ) formation during the micro-channel milling (V-shaped cross-sections) of zirconia utilizing a nanosecond fiber laser system. Experiments are accomplished to examine the consequence of control variables namely transverse feed, pulse frequency, laser power, scan number, and scan speed. The influence of each of the laser process variables on response parameter are studied in order to get the significant trends of laser parameters. With the increment of laser power, the number of pass and transverse feed, HAZ width dimensions tend to increase. The reverse phenomena are observed for pulse frequency and scan speed. The lower HAZ width which is achieved as 31.74 μm at a parametric setting of average power at 10 W, pulse frequency at 65 kHz, scanning speed at 11 mm/s, a number of pass at 1, transverse feed at 0.005 mm.