Chip breakers are essential for achieving reproducible and safe turning processes. In case of cemented carbide tools with standard ISO geometries, they are manufactured by form pressing before sintering. In form turning applications with individual tool geometries, chip breakers are typically avoided, because they require an additional and resource intensive grinding process. An alternative preparation strategy for chip breakers is laser ablation. In this paper, the influence of pulse fluence, areal fluence and pulse duration (pico- and nanosecond regime) on ablation mechanisms of cemented carbide tools is investigated. Different ablation mechanisms between pico- and nanosecond-lasers could be detected. Furthermore, a suitable laser ablation strategy using ns-laser is applied to create a chip breaker. Turning investigations showed distinct shorter chips when machining with modified tools. © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.