Is laser cutting PCB equipment mature now?

In today's PCB circuit board cutting market, the requirements for PCB product quality are getting higher and higher, especially PCBA products and mini PCB products equipped with components, which put forward higher requirements for PCB circuit board cutting. In the past, PCB depaneling equipment mainly used knives, milling cutters, and gong cutters for processing, which had disadvantages such as dust, burrs, and pressure, which had a greater impact on small or component-equipped PCB circuit boards and could not adapt to new applications. At this time, the introduction of laser cutting PCB technology has brought new improvement solutions for PCB depaneling processing.

The advantages of laser cutting PCB are small cutting gap, high precision, and heat affected area less than 0.1mm. Compared with the previous PCB cutting process, laser cutting PCB is completely dust-free, pressure-free, burr-free, and the cutting edge is smooth and neat. So, is the laser cutting PCB equipment mature at present? Can it be widely used? Due to the obvious defects of laser cutting PCB equipment, laser cutting PCB equipment is not yet fully mature.

The disadvantage of laser cutting PCB equipment is low cutting speed. The thicker the cutting material, the lower the cutting speed. The processing speed of different materials is also different. Taking FR4 material as an example, the conversion speed of 1.6mm double-sided V-groove board and 15W UV laser cutting machine is less than 20mm/s. Compared with previous processing methods, it cannot meet the needs of large-scale production. If multiple devices are used to quantify the product, the hardware cost of the laser cutting PCB equipment itself is relatively high, and the price is about 2-3 times that of the previous cutting equipment. The higher the power of the laser equipment, the more expensive it is. If three laser cutting PCB equipment are added to meet the speed of the cutting PCB equipment, the cost will be unbearable. On the other hand, when the laser cuts thick materials such as PCBs above 1mm, it will carbonize the cutting section, which is also the reason why many PCB processing plants cannot accept it.

So, do these shortcomings of laser cutting PCB still exist? Of course, they do, but we are still doing it! PCB laser cutting machines are mainly used in manufacturers with high requirements such as mobile phone PCB, automotive PCB, medical PCB, etc. The cutting accuracy of PCB must reach the inverted um level. This makes the traditional PCB cutting process untouchable, and the laser cutting PCB effect is smooth and burr-free.

In short, the cost of laser cutting PCB equipment is relatively high, and the disadvantage of low speed has not made its market mature, but with the advancement of laser technology, the laser power is getting higher and higher, and the beam quality is getting better and better. Laser cutting PCB requires high frequency, high pulse energy is getting better and better, stability is getting higher and higher, and equipment cost is getting lower and lower. At this stage, it is ready for market maturity, facing high power, automation, and low cost.