Talk:Laser drilling

Narrow focus
The article as it stands today (2011-01-09) has a rather narrow focus on a single application of laser drilling: turbine engines. I think this is a bit too narrow for an article in Wikipedia.

The entire two-paragraph lede asserts: "Manufacturers of turbine engines for aircraft propulsion and for power generation have benefited from the productivity of lasers for drilling small (0.3–1 mm diameter typical) cylindrical holes at 15-90º to the surface in cast, sheet metal and machined components. Their ability to drill holes at shallow angles to the surface at rates of between 0.3 to 3 holes per second has enabled new designs incorporating film-cooling holes for improved fuel efficiency, reduced noise, and lower NOx and CO emissions." Incremental improvements in laser process and control technologies have led to substantial increases in the number of cooling holes used in turbine engines. Fundamental to these improvements and increased use of laser drilled holes is an understanding of the relationship between process parameters and hole quality and drilling speed.

Now I'm quite sure that laser drills are wonderful for drilling small cylindrical holes in metal -- but this being Wikipedia, I think it would benefit us all to clarify some of the capabilities and limitations on laser drills more generally. Do they work for drilling rock? Styrofoam? Wood? Construction industry? Why, or why not? Incapable? (say of drilling some/all kinds of rock?) Un-economic? (too costly relative to alternative/traditional techniques?) Or what? And what about the economics, how expensive are these things for certain specified power ranges and/or drilling rates?

It seems that some attention from a good copyeditor and maybe an expert on the subject would help improve the article. N2e (talk) 00:46, 10 January 2011 (UTC)