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...