Implications of using two low-power continuous-wave lasers for polishing

Laser polishing is widely employed to reduce the surface roughness of products with complex geometries. Traditional laser polishing techniques use a single high-power Gaussian beam to melt and smooth a thin layer of surface material. However, the reliance on high power lasers can present practical challenges such as minimizing surface evaporation or reducing overall cost. In this work, we combined two identical low-power laser beams with a spatial offset in between them to construct an elliptical beam. By changing the spatial offset, combined beams with different lengths along the major axis can be created. We observe over 20% improvement in line roughness reduction using this approach compared to a single Gaussian laser beam with the same total power. Additionally, both experiment and simulation results suggest such improvement is because this dual-laser set-up can create a longer molten pool compared to a single laser.