Abstract
Laser beam cutting is a non-contact, production-flexible and highly productive technique that allows accurate profiling of a wide range of sheet materials. To these and further benefits, laser machining is increasingly being adopted by industry. This paper investigates the effect of material type, workpiece thickness, cutting speed and assistant gas pressure on cut quality for industrial-relevant applications using a CO2 laser. AlMg3 aluminum alloy, St37-2 low-carbon steel and AISI 304 stainless steel were selected to represent the most established materials in many industrial fields and gain insight into different processes (i.e., inert-assisted fusion cutting and oxygen cutting) and absorption behaviors with respect to CO2 laser wavelength. The aim was to enhance the understanding of the mechanisms through which laser cutting parameters and workpiece parameters interact in order to identify general criteria and well-optimized process parameters which guarantee the kerf quality. The quality of laser cut was analyzed in its basic terms: kerf geometry, surface roughness and cut edge quality. The experiments were performed by using a systematic experimental design approach based on Design of Experiments, and the results were validated via Analysis of Variance. Quality assessment was presented and discussed. The visual inspection of cut sections confirms good overall quality and limited presence of laser cut imperfections. The experimental investigation demonstrates that the different materials can be successfully processed within a wide range of the tested values. In addition, optimum cutting conditions which satisfy the straight requirement of the quality standard adopted are identified for each material. This study involves an analysis of both phenomenological and practical issues.
Highlights
Nowadays, Laser Beam Cutting (LBC) is the most widely used process in industry for cutting different sheet materials
This paper investigates the effect of material type, workpiece thickness, cutting speed and assistant gas pressure on cut quality for industrial-relevant applications using a CO2 laser
This paper investigates the effect of material type, workpiece thickness, cutting speed and assistant gas pressure on cut quality in industrial laser cutting of different materials
Summary
Laser Beam Cutting (LBC) is the most widely used process in industry for cutting different sheet materials. Solid-state disk and fiber lasers provide better performance in melting cutting of thin stainless steel sheets (up to 2 mm) with nitrogen as assisting gas, due to the higher beam quality. Under these conditions, solid-state lasers achieve considerably higher cutting speed and surface quality than CO2 lasers. Rajaram et al [10] used regression analysis to describe the combined effects of laser power and cutting speed on kerf width, surface roughness, size of HAZ and drag line of 4130 steel. This paper investigates the effect of material type, workpiece thickness, cutting speed and assistant gas pressure on cut quality in industrial laser cutting of different materials. A visual inspection of kerf sections was carried out in order to exclude slag formation, uncut area and irregularities on the cut faces
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