Laser cutting of wood was one of the first industrial applications of CO2 laser material processing in the early 70’s. Today, it covers market niches such as die board cutting and cutting of inlays. For laser cutting of wood and wood composites, the maximum feed rate and cut quality contribute strongly to the production costs. Therefore, systematic investigations on the cut quality of representative wood species and wood composites have been carried out.
A recommendation for process and material parameters is given, to achieve maximum cut quality and minimum material damage. The cut quality is evaluated using surface quality deviations, which are defined by using the parameters perpendicularity tolerance as well as the roughness of the cut surface. Based on these findings, wood and wood composite cut quality from class 1 to class 3 is achievable, which is the same or even higher than the quality of a sheet metal cut, and much higher than for using a saw. At optimal conditions, material damage depths lower than 20 microns are observed. Finally, the results are compared to conventional wood cutting techniques.
In order to assist optimum scaling of laser machines for the industrial laser user, the feed rate is investigated for different wooden materials, particularly wood fiber reinforced plastics. This leads to an economical study for laser contour cutting of car interior parts with operation costs of 0.13-0.25 €/m.