Investigation on the effects of laser heating on surface quality of OFHC copper in diamond cutting process

Due to the excellent electric and thermal conductivity leading to a high laser damage threshold, oxygen-free high conductivity (OFHC) copper is an ideal material for fabricating high power laser reflectors. However, in diamond machining of OFHC copper, the surface quality deteriorates dramatically with the increasing depth of cut resulting from the formation of surface delamination defects. The formation of these defects is suspected of being influenced by the ductility of OFHC copper, which is temperature dependent. In this research, laser heating was introduced into the diamond cutting process to investigate the influence of temperature on the formation of surface defects of OFHC copper. It was found that laser heating was beneficial to the improvement of the surface quality of OFHC copper at large depth of cut in diamond cutting process.