Cutting of stainless steel with fiber and disk laser
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Date
2006
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Laser Institute of America
Abstract
Laser cutting is a major application of laser materials
processing. The cutting is usually performed with
CO2-laser due to its good beam quality and its
relatively low costs of ownership. Ever since entering
the market the high power solid state lasers have been
expected to achieve a dominating role also in cutting
applications. This has not happened mainly due to the
fact that beam quality has not been sufficient. The
introduction of new generation of solid state lasers
has raised the interest of use of them in cutting
application. This study was concentrated on use of
fiber and disk lasers, the new laser types with a high
beam quality, in cutting of austenitic stainless steel.
The performance of these new lasers at power level
of 4 kW was compared with CO2-laser in respect of
cutting speed, kerf width, kerf edge roughness and
perpendicularity (squarness) in order to validate the
potential of both of the new lasers against traditional
CO2-laser. The results showed that the new lasers
offer a great potential in improving the productivity
of cutting phase with an acceptable edge quality. This
is emphasized in thin sheets of 1.3 and 2.3 mm
thickness. In that case the width of the cut kerf is
considerably narrow especially when using a fiber
laser. In case of thicker sections (4.3 and 6.2 mm) the
focal length was increased in order to reach an
acceptable cut quality still providing a competitive
cutting speed in comparison to a CO2-laser. The fiber
laser was the fastest cutting laser in case of each
thickness. The results were very promising and it can
be stated that these new laser types have a great
potential in cutting and will probably gain a
considerable market share not only in 3D cutting
applications but also in ordinary flat sheet cutting.
Description
Keywords
Stainless steel, Disk laser
Citation
Wandera, C., Salminen, A., Olsen, F. O., & Kujanpää, V. (2006, October). Cutting of stainless steel with fiber and disk laser. In International Congress on Applications of Lasers & Electro-Optics (Vol. 2006, No. 1, p. 404). Laser Institute of America. https://doi.org/10.2351/1.5060827