Overcoming Laser Cutting Challenges: The Three Guidelines you need

Laser cutting is one of the new and amazing technologies used to carve images and shapes out of metal, wood, polycarbonate and other materials. It is used to make signboards and other forms of art for the home and industries. The advantage that laser cutting has over punching, stamping, engraving, embossing and other older technologies is that it is fast, efficient and precise and can make blemish-free designs even on the thinnest sheets of material. Other benefits include that laser cutting is an automated process, and it can be used on a wide variety of materials. However, laser cutting also has its own set of challenges, especially when handled by an inexperienced person. Here are the most common laser-cutting challenges and how you can resolve them.

The Thickness of the Material

Laser cutting is normally ideal when the material being cut is considerably thin. As the thickness of the material increases, the effectiveness of the laser cutter decreases. If you must cut through thick material, ensure that it is done by a professional who knows how to focus the laser and produce superior quality results. Another way that laser-cutting technicians improve the quality of their results is by focusing the gas they are using in the assist process. 

The Composition and Quality of the Material

A material can be of ideal thickness, but if its composition is wrong and the quality is poor, the laser-cut product will still be inferior in quality. For example, if you are using laser cutting on steel, you have to make sure that its surface is clean and free of oil, water and any other contaminations. If the metal surface is not smooth, the cutting process will run smoothly and the resulting material will be poor in quality.

The Time Taken to Set Up

You also need to think about the total amount of time taken to set up the entire laser-cutting apparatus. The set-up includes a lot of factors including size of the nozzle, focal length, gas pressure and type, speed and focal length. When these settings are not tuned optimally, the quality of the resulting design diminishes. Look for a laser-cutting expert who understands the importance of taking time to align the set-up correctly.

These are some of the challenges common with the laser-cutting process. Overcoming these challenges is only easy when you choose a laser-cutting expert to handle the job for you.