Technical Information

Laser cutting is excellent at processing many different materials. Unlike physical machining laser profiling is not affected by the hardness of a material, meaning materials such as high carbon steels can be cut as easily as standard mild steel.

It may be useful to understand a little more about the laser cutting process, its benefits, and some of the limitations.

Laser cutting is a technology that has been used in industry since the 1970's. The first common application was for sign-making, mainly cutting acrylic. Since then the process has been adopted and adapted by virtually every industry group, and is now a significant process in every manufacturing economy.

The reasons for laser cutting popularity include:

The accuracy of the cut part achievable
The repeatiblity and consistency of the process
The level of detail achievable
The range of materials which can be processed
The speed of the process
The cost of parts
The ease of changing parts (particularly when compared to hard tooling etc)
The lack of physical contact during the process
The small heat affected zone

Laser cutting works by melting, burning or vapourising the material, while an assist gas is employed to "clear" the cut zone of the molten / burnt material or the gas vapour. In the early days of laser cutting the setting of the laser to produce the desired effect was very much a manual process and very complex. The latest machines now come with many of the common parameters pre-programmed, allowing much easier setting. However, the variations in batches of material lead to serious issues in cut quality, and operators still require many hours of training to run a laser efficiently and economically.

bysprint screen

Lasers are still complex
machines to operate

Industrial laser cutting machines are predominantly used to cut parts from flat-sheet material. However, there are machines specially adapted to cut tubular components, and multi-axis lasers used to cut pre-formed components.

The cutting process is very complex, but basically involves pre-piercing the material outside the area of desired cut, moving the laserbeam into the cutting area to apply heat, and finally use an assist gas to remove the heated material and produce the cut. The type of assist gas employed is critical, and is dependant on the material to be laser cut; most commonly used are Oxygen (used predominantly for carbon steels), Nitrogen (used for non-ferrous steels & non-metals) and Argon (used for more exotic materials such as titanium).

The cut-edge quality achievable with laser cutting depends on the type of material and the thickness. As the thickness increases the striations on the cut-edge become more prominent. Striations are lines on the cut-edge where the molten zone meets the cool zone

Below is a chart showing materials commonly laser cut at Cutting Technologies, and the maximum thickness we can process. You'll find more detail on each of the material pages accessed by clicking the links above.

Please note - if you want information on the materials we laser engrave please see our Laser Engraving section.