Pulse to pulse control for highly precise and efficient micromachining with femtosecond lasers

Micromachining with high repetition rate femtosecond lasers and galvo scanners shows some limitations in the pulses positioning accuracy due to the galvo mirrors acceleration. This is particularly evident during scan speed or direction changes, resulting in a poor quality and overtreatment e.g. in corners. Several scanning approaches have been proposed to tackle these issues like the so-called skywriting (SW) and the pulse-on-demand (POD) being the last limited to ns lasers, moderate pulse repetition rates and scan speeds. Recently, POD approach has been extended to femtosecond laser sources with high power and high repetition rate. Here, for the first time, we explored the huge potential in laser micromachining of femtosecond POD technology associated to a fast galvo scanner. We tested an innovative set-up allowing for precise laser triggering at the requested time and position for MHz repetition rate and scan speed as high as 20 m/s. The pulse position accuracy of the system has been estimated to be ≤ 1µm whilst performances have been evaluated in comparison to conventional scanning and SW. Finally, we report the results of an engraving test on stainless steel. The advantages of the approach we propose are clearly shown in terms of machining quality and precision with respect to conventional scanning and reduction of the processing time by ≈ 40% with respect to SW.