UV laser cutting of beech plywood
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
UV laser cutting of beech plywood Kam Chuen Yung 1 & Hang Shan Choy 1 & Tingyu Xiao 1 & Zhixiang Cai 2 Received: 12 June 2020 / Accepted: 9 November 2020 # Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This paper presents experimental and theoretical studies on the UV laser cutting of beech plywood. The multi-technological factors in the laser cutting process were determined using Taguchi’s parameter design approach. The study of the wood material after laser cutting, related to its microstructure, surface morphology, and surface energy, is included. Beech plywood components were cut using pulsed UV lasers with varying parameters to determine superior surface quality, based on SEM, gray level, water contact angle, and optical profiling. The results showed that the surface roughness, in Ra, of beech plywood components at different laser powers, with and without a gas flux control system, can be reduced from 17.3 to 11.1 μm. The burn marks of the laser cut samples were also characterized in terms of gray level estimation. The results indicated that the gray level of the samples was increased by about 16% with a gas flux control system, implying a lesser extent of the burn marks in the plywood. The proposed laser cutting approach was proven to be successful in controlling the surface finish quality of beech plywood components. Keywords UV laser . Beech plywood . Surface morphology . Surface energy . Taguchi method
1 Introduction Laser technologies are popular in many industrial applications for materials processing in cutting engineering components because of their high accuracy and high power density [1]. In the furniture industry, there has been a substantial increase in the use of plywood. As depicted in Fig. 1, plywood consists of adhesive bonded multi-layer wood with more than 3 layers, with the grain orientation at right angles between adjacent layers. This orientation not only improves the strength of the plywood but also reduces its shrinkage. Commonly, plywood pieces used in building construction are pressed into large, flat sheets. However, plywood can also be made in different forms and shapes to be used in furniture. Martinez-Conde et al. [4] reported a comparative study and showed that there were many advantages in using a CO2 laser as compared to traditional wood cutting technology such as sawing (manual, semiautomated, and fully automated processes) and CNC cutting * Hang Shan Choy [email protected] 1
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
2
Wuhan Intelligent Laser Technology Co., Ltd., Wuhan, China
machines. Direct contact between the cutting blade and the wood-based material surface is unavoidable in conventional cutting processes (sawing and CNC routing), generating a mechanical force. However, cutting wood-based materials using laser technologies, as illustrated in Fig. 1 (c), (d), and (e), provides a number of advantages over conventional processes. These include non-cont
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