Patent ID: 7194803

Claim:
A method of forming a seal ring comprising the following steps: providing a seal ring wherein said seal ring has a flat seal face; providing a laser having a laser beam that is directed to said seal face; shaping the laser beam so as to have a geometric shape with convergent non-linear side edges so that the cut of the laser beam has a non-uniform depth across the width thereof; and providing a plurality of ablation cuts with said laser beam over at least a portion of the seal face to create one or more micro-topography depth features configured as a wavy face, each said ablation cut being formed by relative movement of said laser beam and said seal ring wherein said laser beam cuts through one or more passes along a beam path to form said ablation cut along said beam path, said laser beam being applied to a plurality of sidewardly adjacent beam paths such that the ablation cuts are located sidewardly contiguous to each other and the adjacent side edge regions of adjacent passes of the laser beam are overlapped and formation of excessive depth grooves is prevented.