Measurement of cut front properties in laser cutting

Cut-front properties are a key variable in laser-cutting and thus of major importance for self-optimization. Within the Cluster of Excellence at RWTH Aachen University, several achievements were made in setting up sensor-systems that provide information on the operating-point of this melt-based manufacturing process. These achievements contribute to a gradual increase in system-transparency which is seen as an enabler for self-optimization. Instead of searching for a single measurand to characterize the course of the process, an approach is being presented which establishesa surrogate criterion to allow determination of the current operating-point. In the depicted area, this is done by joining sources of information from process observation, determining boundary-conditions such as actual feed-rate and modeling of process-variables. Although process-variables like properties of the cutting-front are influenced through more than one process parameter, a concept for a sensor-system is reported showing the correlation between properties of the melt-front and the current feed-rate. The results are compared to a solution derived from process-simulation.