A Platform For All Materials

Below is a sampling of the many materials we have machined in our Applications Lab (click images to enlarge). Contact us if your are interested in our doing a rapid proof-of-concept experiment for your application.

Nitinol Stents – Micro Struts While picosecond and nanosecond lasers can ablate a prescribed pattern in a Nitinol tube, they also deposit significant amounts of heat into the part. Raydiance technology obviates this problem by cutting without any heat whatsoever. The athermal process enables medical device manufacturers to eliminate several costly and difficult post-processing steps. (Click image to view and download.)

Fused Silica The Raydiance logo was machined sub-surface in this fused silica disk. This capability provides an effective solution for addressing the counterfeiting of luxury goods, as well as tracking and identifying pharmaceutical drugs. (Click image to view and download.)

Platinum Like gold, platinum is increasingly begin deployed in medical device applications. Though difficult to machine with traditional lasers, mechanical saws or electron discharge machining, platinum can be easily and precisely ablated with the Raydiance ultrafast laser platform. (Click image to view and download.)

Stainless Steel Stainless steel is a widely used material in industries ranging from aviation and aerospace, to medical devices and surgical instruments. One important application of Raydiance’s ultrafast laser platform, particularly for the aerospace industry, is that of marking small parts. Here, a 1.2 mm square, machine-readable, two-dimensional matrix was ablated in stainless steel. (Click image to view and download.)

Thick-Walled Nitinol Applications for Nitinol in the medical device field have exploded in the last decade and a half. Raydiance’s ultrafast platform provides a reliable means for machining this traditionally difficult to process material. Raydiance has demonstrated the ability to ablate both very tiny microstents (20 micron struts), as well as large dimension tubes like this one, which has a 460 micron wall. (Click image to view and download.)

Shallow Trenches in 316L Stainless Steel Shallow trenches in stainless steel were machined with the Raydiance R-Sribe precision solution. These trenches are 100 microns deep and 350 microns wide. Similar features are used in the industrial safety industry to create pressure burst disks. The R-Scribe Solution provides a repeatable processing method that translates directly in to cost savings for the customer. (Click image to view and download.)

Gold Due to its radiopacity, bio-compitability, and high electrical conductivity, gold is a highly valued material for medical device applications. It is also notoriously difficult to machine. However, Raydiance applications engineers have recently demonstrated the ability to cleanly and precisely machine this noble metal with the Raydiance ultrafast laser platform. (Click image to view and download.)

Bioabsorbable Stents This bio-absorbable stent with 150 um wall thickness and 3.48 mm outer diameter was machined with a Raydiance-powered Rofin StarCut Femto workstation in approximately 3 minutes. There are no melt or other heat affected zones whatsoever. This part was taken directly from the  workstation and was photographed without cleaning. (Click image to view and download.)

Raydiance Nitinol Stent The ability to athermally ablate materials represents a significant advance in the manufacturing of medical micro-devices. Here a Nitinol stent was machined with precise features such as would be used in a commercial vascular stent design. (Click image to view and download.)

Microfluidics Features in Quartz Quartz is increasingly becoming the material of choice in the microfluidics field. Due to its chemical structure, quartz is naturally conducive to capillary electrophoresis (CE), a functional requirement for lab-on-a-chip and other microfluidics applications. While plastics are often used as the chip material, they require surface activation processes to establish a “charged wall” for CE. This adds to the cost and reduces the yield of plastic systems. (Click image to view and download.)

Bar Code in Quartz A bar code pattern was uploaded into the Raydiance system and then machined below the surface of a glass sample. (Click image to view and download.)

Life Sciences Glass Needle This 120 um diameter life sciences glass needle, such as is used for in-vitro fertilization, was machined with the Raydiance platform. The hole in the side of the needle is 10 um in diameter. (Click image to view and download.)

Nanostructured Silicon This silicon wafer was nanostructured with the Raydiance ultrafast laser. Structuring of this sort has application in the photovoltaic cell market. (Click image to view and download.)

Pig Cornea Sub-surface ablation was used to create a 200 um thick flap in a pig cornea, much as would be done in a LASIK procedure. The flap is folded back to the left. From its transparency, it is evident that there was no thermal damage to the tissue. (Click image to view and download.)

Titanium Precise holes with zero, positive, or negative taper can be machined in titanium with the Raydiance R-Drill Solution. Here, a 204 micron hole was cleanly machined in 250 micron thick titanium sheet stock. (Click image to view and download.)

Tungsten Scribe Feature Tungsten, one of the hardest materials known, was easily machined with the Raydiance ultrafast laser system. This feature is approximately 700 um deep and 276 um wide. Scribes like this can be used in the industrial burst disk industry. (Click image to view and download.)