Laser fusion cutting of stainless steel is often considered in a material range from 0,3mm up to 4mm and laser powers up to 2kW. For a given material thickness, different optimum beam and process parameters can be determined empirically, leading to a dross-free cut for high tool travel speeds. Realising sharp 90-degree corners, dross formation is observed and leads to a deteriorated cutting quality. With reorientation at small radii, the speed-dependent change in the cutting process is superimposed by the existing beam to nozzle misalignment and contributes to the stability of a cut. The feature radius R on the stability of the cutting process is being determined by reducing feature radius R. In this paper, cutting of different radii for different sized conventional nozzles is considered and analysed. Based on cutting quality evaluation, fine feature cutting is defined by discussing thickness-dependent finest cutting feature for a given gas dynamic input.

Date Published: 1 July 2015
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 9657, Industrial Laser Applications Symposium (ILAS 2015), 965706 (1 July 2015); doi: 10.1117/12.2179445

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9657:
Industrial Laser Applications Symposium (ILAS 2015)
Mike Green; Cath Rose, Editor(s)