Investigation of Laser Ablative Micromachining of Al/TiB2 Nanocomposite

Laser beam machining (LBM) is used to machine a variety of materials economically and to obtain the required quality metrics. The quality of the surface finish of laser-machined components is affected by the improper selection of process parameters during machining. In this paper, microchannels were machined on Al/TiB2 nanocomposite using an Nd: YAG laser system. An atomic force microscope was used to obtain the surface roughness of microchannels. The aim of this process is to identify the influence of the individual and interactive effect of the process parameters on the surface roughness of the microchannels and to identify the optimum combination of the process parameters for minimum surface roughness. Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array-based Design of Experiment (DoE) was implemented to conduct the experimental study. A statistical analysis of the results was performed for the experimental data. The results are presented in detail.