Experimental investigation on the CO2 laser cutting of soda-lime glass

Abstract

This study reports on complete glass cutting using a single CO2 laser beam with a low power of several tens of watts. In this study, the morphological characteristics of a cut surface and the process window for complete cutting were investigated at various process conditions. The damage threshold (in laser energy per unit length) for the glass surface was found to be ∼0.0203 J/mm. Increasing the laser energy above this level induced surface melting and crack generation, and the complete cutting of the glass eventually occurred due to huge crack propagation along the scan direction when the laser energy was above 0.67 J/mm. The line edge roughness (LER) measured along the cut surface was in the range of 106–500 µm and tended to increase with the laser energy. According to the result of the process window test, it was found that the process conditions using low laser power (8 and 16 W) and scan speed (12 and 15 mm/s) have a relatively wide process margin for cutting.