Comprehensive assessment of the CO2 laser cut quality of ceramics with different assist gas injection systems

C O 2 laser cutting is an efficient and advantageous process for cutting of ceramics when the hardness of such materials makes the conventional machining methods unproductive. At the same time, the application of laser cutting to ceramics involves the assessment of the different process parameters to select the suitable conditions for every specific ceramic. In this work, a comprehensive analysis of the CO2 laser cutting of mullite-alumina is presented. The cut quality was assessed under the criterion of facilitate the comparison of the results obtained using different process parameters and two different assist gas injection systems. For this reason, some quantitative standard parameters were analyzed (kerf width, roughness, perpendicularity), besides of the preliminary survey of some features and the microscopic examination of the heat affected zone. The results demonstrate the improvement of the cut quality using an assist gas injection system based on an off-axis De Laval nozzle.