High Q Laser has announced a partnership with a Swisstec, a manufacturer of laser micromachining systems for precision cutting, drilling and welding, particularly of medical devices. In future, says High Q, the cutting systems offered by Swisstec will be equipped with femtosecond laser sources, which is High Q's area of expertise.
The big advantages of the femtosecond laser are its short interaction time with the material and high peak intensity. Pulse durations in the femtosecond time scale enable what is called 'cold cutting' because material removal occurs faster than significant heat conduction. This offers cutting without any melting or burr formation at the edges reducing the effort of further treatments of the stents to a minimum.
The high intensities provided by femtosecond laser pulses enables multiphoton absorption processes, which means that nearly every material is absorbing the laser light. So with this fs-cutting system every material can be processed with highest precision, no matter if its metallic, ceramic or even polymer-based (e.g. bioresorbable polymers).
