Cutting applications with high brightness lasers

Laser cutting machines with linear motor drives provide high contour accuracy and high cutting rates. Thus laser beam cutting has become increasingly competitive compared to mechanical precision cutting [1]. Since several years, new laser beam sources are available for cutting. One of the promising solutions is cutting with fiber lasers The fiber laser has several advantages such as absorption rate, power efficiency, fiber delivery, better focusing if compared to the CO2 laser. During recent years, the system technology for laser beam cutting was upgraded at Fraunhofer IWS Dresden [2]. In particular, a precision 3D-laser cutting system with linear drives, robotic systems, scanners and several fiber lasers have been installed. Within the frame of several research projects laser beam cutting with fiber lasers has been investigated in order to compare the cutting quality and cutting performance with the CO2 laser. Objective of this study was to show the potential of fiber laser remote-cutting. It could be learned that single-mode fiber lasers in the kilowatt range can increase the cutting speed and can thus reduce the cutting time dramatically [3]. This paper describes the gained user experience of Fraunhofer IWS Dresden. Single mode beam sources are evaluated with respect to cutting speed and quality. Moreover, cutting of thick metal sheets with high brightness lasers will be demonstrated and compared to CO2 cutting.