Getting Started with Laser Cutting

In this chapter, we are going to introduce laser cutting, including its strengths and drawbacks and the potential it can give you.

Fusion 360 has quite a limited set of commands and tools dedicated to laser cutting and is not exactly the best solution when it comes to laser cutting. However, getting a general idea of a new technology is still very important since it will help us to expand our knowledge beyond milling and turning.

Therefore, the goal of this chapter (and the following ones on laser cutting) is to provide several hints about laser cutting. These chapters are not really aimed at industrial production. We will take a discursive approach to the subject, so we won’t be diving too much into parameters or equations.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Introducing lasers
• How does a laser cut?
• Reviewing the pros and cons of laser cutting

Technical requirements

We have now changed the production technology, moving from milling to laser cutting; therefore, this chapter is a fresh restart – there are no prior requirements.

Introducing lasers

Lasers, known to humankind since the ancient Egyptians, proved themselves to be valuable time and time again during the construction of the pyramids – at least this is something a ufologist may suggest to us.

Jokes aside, in reality, lasers date back to 1916 when Albert Einstein first theorized their behavior. As you may expect from such an important physicist, grasping the fundamental nature of lasers is rather complex and would require us to be quantum physicists. That kind of understanding is outside the scope of this book, so instead, we will simplify things quite a bit.

Long story short, a laser is an energetic beam of light that is coherent and focused on a very tiny spot. I know that this may sound weird to most, but light is far more complex than most of us would imagine.

Light is an electromagnetic (EM) wave that we can see with our eyes. Saying that, not every EM wave is visible to the eye; it mostly depends on its wavelength, which is a...

How does a laser cut?

In recent years, the power of fiber laser sources has exploded, and every year, new records are achieved. A few years ago, a laser source with a power of 6 kilowatts (KW) would have been a dream come true for most producers; however, nowadays, it is typical to find cutting machines with a 15 KW source, with some producers even starting to experiment with sources up to 50 KW.

To wrap our head around these numbers, let’s imagine my motorbike, which has a power of 50 KW; at full throttle, it can bring its mass (190 Kg) and my mass (75 Kg) all the way up to more than 200 km/h. Now, imagine all that power focused on a tiny spot with an area of less than a square millimeter. As you may guess, focusing all this energy on such a small surface leads to temperatures high enough for the metal to melt (or vaporize).

Melting the metal, however, is not enough to cut it properly: we need to remove the melted metal and clean the cut width; otherwise, once the laser...

Reviewing the pros and cons of laser cutting

Cutting metal sheets with a laser is a valuable option for a wide range of applications, from rough welded parts for building sites to artistic decorations that can be found in finely furnished homes. However, as you may expect, no manufacturing technology is free of limitations or drawbacks.

Let’s review the pros and cons of this process.

Advantages of laser cutting

Let’s start by discussing why laser cutting is such a great technology.

Extreme productivity

In other technologies (such as milling or turning, for example), the tool powerfully plunges into the stock to remove the chip. This type of strong interaction with the part needs a very stiff CNC structure that doesn’t bend too much and a strong stock holding fixture to counteract such a force.

As we found out, laser cutting is achieved without touching the part with any component of our machine. This means that as long as the laser source can...

Summary

And that’s the end of the chapter. Here, we introduced lasers, looked at how a laser machine works, and started to understand the underlying complexities and considerations that proper CAM software manages to cut parts with a laser.

Despite not being able to call ourselves experts on the subject after these few pages, I hope that we now have a general idea of what is going on with laser cutting and when it may be an interesting manufacturing solution to opt for.

In the next chapter, we will continue our laser-cutting introduction by exploring how to create a proper nesting for our parts!