ANALYSIS OF THE LASER GROOVING AND CUTTING PROCESSES

Laser grooving is a very complicated process to analyse, due to the molten material's behaviour. Based on the assumption of complete removal of molten material, a theoretical analysis is performed to derive groove depth as a function of process parameters. The heat balance at the cutting front is used as the governing equation to determine groove depth. Conduction heat direction and area change are approximated to obtain a closed form of the groove depth. The theoretical results show good agreement with experimental data. This approach provides a simple way of predicting groove depths and is applied to the prediction of depths of cuts in laser cutting.