Patent ID: 7633036

Claim:
A method for micromachining a substrate, comprising: providing a pulsed beam of radiation, said pulsed beam including multiple pulses separated by a temporal pulse separation; at a first element, comprising a changeable output beamsplitter, splitting said pulsed beam into a plurality of sub-beams and outputting said plurality of sub-beams at selectable angles, wherein a number of said plurality of sub-beams and the selectable angle of each of said sub-beams are changeable in an amount of time that is less than said temporal pulse separation; and at a second element, comprising a plurality of deflectors, deflecting each of the plurality of sub-beams from one of said plurality of deflectors in a selectable direction based on orientations of said plurality of deflectors, wherein an orientation of each of said plurality of deflectors is changeable in a redirection time period which is greater than said temporal pulse separation.