Since the eighties laser incorporated into production systems has made a vast impact on production methods. In the cutting process laser has been replacing both blanking and plasma torch since it is able to cut burr free, with high production rate, and economically. Nevertheless, laser processing is still limited to repetitive high-rate operations due to the trial-and-error calibrations involved in obtaining an acceptable operating condition when changes in work piece geometry, surface quality, and dimensional accuracy are imposed.
Moreover, the quality inspection of the laser cuts is performed by offline inspections of the edges of the metal by practiced operators.
In this paper a model based on fuzzy logic is proposed to help the planner of a CO2 assisted laser cutting process. The quality of cut is evaluated on the basis of 5 criteria that took into account the appearance of cut, frequency of striation, width of the heat affected zone, roughness of cut, width of the cutting path (kerf). The planner can evaluate the attained cut quality through the here-proposed model. The knowledge for building the fuzzy model came from experimental trials. The same tool can be used for quality inspection performed through an automated system that merges the expertise of cutting operators with mathematical model’s exactness. A practiced operator is no longer necessary. This model can be extended to other laser cutting processes.