Generally speaking, laser cutting offers the possibility to obtain cuts with high quality. Nevertheless, fusion laser cutting, the most common laser cutting technique to process the majority of engineering materials offers poor quality in certain materials as ceramics, some aluminium alloys, etc. Cuts with dross, excessive roughness and a substantial heat affected zone (HAZ) are produced. Research efforts performed to improve the cut quality have been focused into the precise selection of laser operating parameters or on the aerodynamics of the assist gas. However, this inadequate finishing can be related to the dynamics of the melt during the process. Therefore, the understanding of melt dynamics during the laser cutting is a topic of great importance.
In this work, the real-time behaviour of the laser cutting process is analysed by using lateral visualization of the cutting front during laser cutting of glass with a high speed video camera. Influence of processing parameters on the process is presented and related to the quality characteristics.