The energetic efficiency of remote cutting in comparison to conventional fusion cutting

The remote cutting technique provides an enormous potential in terms of cutting speeds when working on thin sheets. Even on contour cutting speeds about 100 m/min are realizable [1]. Working without any cutting gas the material of the cutting kerf must be vaporized partially. It is evident that the energy input must be higher than for pure melting of the cutting kerf’s material. The amount of vaporized material went in the range from 20 to 40 percent [2]. In order to characterize laser cutting processes in terms of energetic efficiency the severance energy postulated by [3] can be used. This parameter depends on the necessary laser power to cut a defined sheet thickness at a certain cutting speed. Hitherto it was used to compare different laser cutting processes using different laser beam sources when cutting straight lines. In order to characterize different processes for cutting real contours, the geometry of the part to be cut is important, too. The complexity of a part can be characterized by the agility [4]. The target of this paper is to combine the severance energy and the agility in order to compare the remote cutting and the conventional fusion cutting energetically. It will be shown where remote cutting can be applied very efficiently to produce parts in a flexible and highly productive way and what the application area of conventional fusion cutting with fast axis is.