Laser cutting of Kapton film cables

The original work, began as an autoschediastic inquiry into alternate ways of cutting multi-layer kapton cables. The initial tests, started with continuous wave carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2} 1060 nm), and pulsed copper vapor lasers (Cu 578 nm). The continuous wave CO{sub 2} laser produced an unacceptable cut; but, the pulsed copper vapor laser produced a cut that looked promising. At this point, a contract for additional research work was issued by Sandia National Laboratory to EG&G Mound Applied Technologies. The additional work started by identifying the cutting process variables and developing a design experiment. Then experimental work proceeded to cutting multi-layer kapton cables with a 10 watt pulsed copper vapor laser using a shielding gas, then a 300 watt pulsed CO{sub 2} laser with no shielding gas, and finally a 150 watt pulsed CO{sub 2} laser using compressed air to remove abraded material and smoke. The following material explains the details of our methods and results. The various cutting methods were qualitatively evaluated using pictures obtained from a scanning electron microscope