Thermodynamic evaluation of inert-gas laser beam fusion cutting with CO2, disk and fiber lasers

Inert-gas laser beam fusion cutting is an established thermal cutting technology for stainless and other high-alloyed steels. At the present time, CO2 lasers are particularly applied for corresponding cutting applications but the nowadays available solid-state disk and fiber lasers seem to be an attractive alternative as efficient cutting heat sources due to their advantages in power efficiency, beam guidance and beam quality. It is consequently anticipated that disk and fiber lasers possess a great potential to change the limits of the cutting performance. However, comparative experimental studies have also shown some distinct differences in the process behavior of CO2, disk and fiber lasers cutting which are not easy to understand at the first sight. Consequently, the available cutting data were thermodynamically analyzed. The theoretical investigations revealed some possible reasons for the detected quantitative and qualitative differences between the cutting results with different laser sources and the achieved deeper understanding of the relevant interactions between the beam properties and the cutting efficiency can be useful for the further establishment of disk and fiber laser cutting.