The application of laser cutting to metal materials has been widely known, but many people do not know how to judge the quality of processing when using laser cutting machines. In fact, the cutting quality is usually judged from the angle of end surface roughness, bottom burr, perpendicularity, and slit width.
1. End surface roughness
When the laser is cutting materials, affected by the airflow and feed speed, the end face will form vertical (or inclined) lines. The deeper the line, the rougher the end face, and the shallower the line, the smoother the end face. Roughness not only affects the appearance of the edge, but also the friction characteristics, so the lower the roughness, the higher the cut quality. By adjusting parameters such as laser power, feed speed, focal length, auxiliary gas type and air pressure, the end surface roughness can be continuously optimized.
2. the bottom burr
The principle of laser cutting metal is to vaporize the metal instantaneously through the high energy of the laser, and blow away the slag on the surface of the workpiece through the auxiliary gas. However, in the actual processing process, factors such as thicker plates, insufficient air pressure, and mismatched feed speeds will cause part of the slag to cool down and form burrs that hang on the bottom of the workpiece. At this time, additional deburring work is required, which consumes additional man-hours. The burrs and dross at the bottom of the workpiece are very important criteria for judging the cutting quality.
3. Verticality
For thin metal sheets, the perpendicularity of laser cutting is negligible, but when the material thickness exceeds 10mm, the perpendicularity of the cutting edge is very important. When away from the focus, the laser beam becomes divergent, and the cut becomes wider toward the top or bottom depending on the position of the focus. The cutting edge deviates from the vertical line by a few hundredths of a millimeter. The more vertical the edge, the higher the cutting quality.
4. slit width
The kerf width is a manifestation of the processing accuracy and usually does not affect the cutting quality. The kerf width will only become an important indicator when a particularly precise contour and pattern need to be formed inside the workpiece. The slit width determines the minimum inner diameter of the contour. The smaller the slit width, the more precise the contour and the smaller the hole diameter. This is also one of the important advantages of laser cutting instead of plasma cutting. However, as the thickness of the sheet increases, the slit width will inevitably increase. To ensure stable and high-precision cutting, it is necessary to ensure that the workpiece is stable in the processing area of the laser cutting machine.
