High efficiency laser oxygen thick section cutting of mild steels using disk laser

Abstract

As a high efficiency laser oxygen thick section cutting technology, the Laser Oxygen Thick Section Cutting (LOTSC) was introduced to compare with the conventional laser oxygen cutting. This paper presents a large number of results of mild steels from 10mm to 30mm cut by LOTSC using disk laser, which involves the effects of standoff distance, laser power and gas pressure. The cutting speed can be reduced with decrease of gas pressure and increase of standoff distance. The maximum cutting speed of LOTSC increased with the laser power, while the optimum and minimum cutting speed decreased with it. The discussion of cut quality is mainly based on the kerf, taper and perpendiculairty. Both the taper and perpendicualirty can be reduced at low gas pressure, high cutting speed and high standoff distance.