ABSTRACT
Previous chapters (Chapters 1-6) have covered fundamentals of laser machining and discussed laser machining of different advanced materials such as structural ceramics, biomaterials and composites. This chapter will now elaborate on laser machining of intermetallics (a combination of two or more metallic and non-metallic elements that form an alloy with the properties in between the properties of metallic and ceramic systems) which is also another class of advanced materials. The different applications of intermetallics were covered in Chapter 1 while the different techniques available for machining them were mentioned in Chapter 2. Laser machining of alloys such as Ti-6Al-4V which are widely used as biomaterials was covered in Chapter 5. As discussed below, lasers have been used for machining different intermetallic systems. It should be noted that only one and two dimensional laser machining will be discussed here as there was no work found in open literature that discussed the three dimensional laser machining of intermetallic systems.
