Laser cutting

The laser is a beam of energy concentrated on a small surface. The power of lasers is used for cutting materials or welding.

The laser is a beam of energy concentrated on a small surface. The power of lasers is used for cutting materials or welding.

The laser heats the surface of the workpiece to be cut over a small width. The reduced width of the melting point of the metal allows the properties of the material to be maintained at the edge of the cutting plane. This is known as the Thermally Affected Zone (TAZ). This technology is very fast and is widely used in industry.
In order to improve the cutting capacity of the laser, it is often amplified either by gas, as in the case of the CO2 laser, or by a crystal, as in the case of the Yag laser (neodymium-doped yttrium aluminium garnet), or even by optical fibres in the case of the fibre laser.

Laser cutting can be used to work on surfaces or hollow volumes (e.g. tubes or profiles). The machines are specialised either in flat cutting or in tube cutting. It is the shape of the cutting surface and the possible movement of the laser head that makes the cutting machine specific.

Laser cutting is appreciated in the industry for its speed of execution and its reasonable cost. Easy to automate, laser cutting is often accompanied by automatic loading. Often in automated processes, laser cutters are equipped with two tables to avoid downtime for unloading the cut parts.

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