Laser cutting technology offers a significant improvement in the productivity and reduction of manufacturing costs in clothing, textile, automotive, furniture, footwear and aerospace industries. The existing fabric laser cutting technology lacks, however, the required perfonnance and reliability, due to limitations of positioning systems that are currently in use. The paper describes a unique mechanical design of a positioning system and computer control of a high-speed laser fabric cutting system developed at RD Corporation.
Patterns to be cut are delivered to the system in the form of CAD files, where the actual layout is already optimized with respect to minimum waste of material. The pattern files are then translated to the form of executable commands which are understood by a digital signal processor (DSP) based motion controller. After downloading these commands are executed in the DSP. Performance of cutting process is monitored by a high level PC based workstation.
Finally, the paper outlines plans for the future development of the system, which will include auto-focus control for the laser cutting head and two head cutting capability.