Modeling and Optimization of Fiber Laser Marking on Stainless Steel 304

Laser marking is one of the well-known operations used in the present-day industry for permanent marking of the products, which includes specification and logo marking of any organization or institute. From the study of past research, it has been found that less attempt has been put forward in the development of the empirical model and optimizing of the process parameter for laser marking of any logo, characters, numbers, etc. In this chapter, attempt has been made to laser mark a geometrical figure on stainless steel 304 using multi-diode pumped fiber laser of wavelength 1,064 nm operating on pulse mode with a laser spot diameter of 21 µm (micrometer). This chapter focuses on the development of empirical relationships, the influence of various process parameters such as average laser power, pulse frequency, duty cycle, scanning speed, etc., with mark intensity and circularity using 326response surface methodology. Desirability function analysis has also been performed for optimization of process parameters for optimum value of responses of mark intensity and circularity. The multi-objective optimal parameter settings for achieving maximum mark intensity of 80% and circularity of 0.9987 were obtained as laser power of 13.35 W, pulse frequency of 53.33 kHz, duty cycle of 24% and scanning speed of 5 mm/s, respectively.