Experimental investigation on the CO 2 laser cutting of soda-lime glass

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DOI 10.1007/s12206-020-0727-x

Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 34 (8) 2020 Original Article DOI 10.1007/s12206-020-0727-x Keywords: · CO2 laser · Soda-lime glass · Glass cutting · Line edge roughness (LER) · Crack

Correspondence to: Joonghan Shin [email protected]

Citation: Kang, S. G., Shin, J. (2020). Experimental investigation on the CO2 laser cutting of soda-lime glass. Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 34 (8) (2020) ?~?. http://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-020-0727-x

Received December 26th, 2019 Revised

Experimental investigation on the CO2 laser cutting of soda-lime glass SeungGu Kang and Joonghan Shin Department of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Kongju National University, Cheonan 34103, Korea

Abstract

This study reports on complete glass cutting using a single CO2 laser beam with a low power of several tens of watts. In this study, the morphological characteristics of a cut surface and the process window for complete cutting were investigated at various process conditions. The damage threshold (in laser energy per unit length) for the glass surface was found to be ~0.0203 J/mm. Increasing the laser energy above this level induced surface melting and crack generation, and the complete cutting of the glass eventually occurred due to huge crack propagation along the scan direction when the laser energy was above 0.67 J/mm. The line edge roughness (LER) measured along the cut surface was in the range of 106-500 μm and tended to increase with the laser energy. According to the result of the process window test, it was found that the process conditions using low laser power (8 and 16 W) and scan speed (12 and 15 mm/s) have a relatively wide process margin for cutting.

March 26th, 2020

Accepted May 29th, 2020 † Recommended by Editor Hyung Wook Park

© The Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020

1. Introduction Soda-lime glass is the most commonly used glass type for windowpanes, containers, commodity products and is the basic material for various types of glass research [1, 2]. In order to use the soda-lime glass property in these applications, it should be precisely cut into a right size. However, due to the brittle and hard characteristics of the glass material, the processing of the glass is very difficult. Several techniques are used for glass cutting. The most prevalent way is cutting by mechanical tools using physical contact and force [3-5]. However, this method causes severe cracking and large material loss at the cut area. A water-jet cutter using highly pressurized water as an energy source can provide relatively good cutting quality [6, 7]; however, the post-treatment to clean cut surfaces and serious wear of the water-jet nozzle increase the processing time and cost. Glass material can be also cut by a laser beam with highly focused optical energy. This method has received considerable attention for glass cutting due to its many advantages. First, the laser cutting technique is a non-contact process suita