Some experimental studies on CO2 laser cutting quality of polymeric materials

Laser cutting of polymeric materials is a popular process in several manufacturing industries. This article presents a preliminary study to evaluate the effect of the processing parameters (laser power and cutting velocity) under the quality of the cut for several polymeric materials. A plan of experiments was established considering CO2 laser cutting with prefixed processing parameters in several polymeric materials with different thickness. The objective was to evaluate the quality of the cut (presence of burr and dimension of heat affected zone (HAZ)). Laser cutting workability of the polymers/comosites under investigation is as follow: PMMA very high, PC high, PP high/medium and reinforced thermoset plastics lower. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.