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Most laser cutting systems utilise a gas jet to remove molten or vaporised material from the kerf.The speed, economy and quality of the cut can be strongly dependent on the aerodynamic conditions created by the nozzle, workpiece proximity and kerf shape. Adverse conditions can be established that may lead to an unwelcome lack of reproducibility of cut quality.Relatively low gas nozzle pressures can result in supersonic flow in the jet with its associated shock fronts.When the nozzle is placed at conventional distances (1 -2mm) above the workpiece, the force exerted by the gas on the workpiece and the cut products (the cutting pressure) can be significantly less than the nozzle pressure. Higher cutting pressures can be achieved by increasing the height of the nozzle above the workpiece, to a more damage resistant zone, provided that the shock structure of the jet is taken into account.Conventional conical nozzles with circular exits can be operated with conditions that will result in cutting pressures up to 3 Bar (g) in the more distant zone. At higher pressures in circular tipped nozzles the cutting pressure in this zone decays to inadequate levels.Investigations of a large number of non -circular nozzle tip shapes have resulted in the selection of a few specific shapes that can provide cutting pressures in excess of 6 Bar(g) at distances of 4 to 7mm from the nozzle tip.Since there is a strong correlation between cutting pressure and the speed and quality of laser cutting, the paper describes the aerodynamic requirements for achieving the above effects and reports the cutting results arising from the different nozzle designs and conditions. The results of the work of other investigators, who report anomalous laser cutting results, will be examined and reviewed in the light of the above work.

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A novel method is presented to manufacture multilevel diffractive optical elements (DOEs) in polymer by single-step KrF excimer laser ablation using a halftone mask. The DOEs have a typical pixel dimension of 5 µm and are up to 512 by 512 pixels in size. The DOEs presented are Fresnel lenses and Fourier computer generated holograms, calculated by means of a conventional iterative Fourier transform algorithm. The halftone mask is built up as an array of 5 µm-square pixels, each containing a rectangular or L-shaped window on an opaque background. The mask is imaged onto the polymer with a 5x, 0.13 NA reduction lens. The pixels are not resolved by the lens, so they behave simply as attenuators, allowing spatial variation of the ablation rate via the window size. The advantages of halftone mask technology over other methods, such as pixel-by-pixel ablation and multi-mask overlay, are that it is very fast regardless of DOE size, and that no high-precision motion stages and alignment are required. The challenges are that the halftone mask is specific to the etch curve of the polymer used, that precise calibration of each grey-level is required, and that the halftone mask must be calculated specifically for the imaging lens used. This paper describes the design procedures for multilevel DOEs and halftone masks, the calibration of the various levels, and some preliminary DOE test results.