Copper is a soft metal with a reddish-orange surface with a metallic luster when first cut, and a purplish-red color on its own. It has good ductility, high thermal and electrical conductivity, so it is the most commonly used material in cables and electrical and electronic components, and can also be used as a construction material, and can be composed of many kinds of alloys. Copper can be divided into many kinds: brass, purple copper, bronze, white copper, etc.
Although fiber laser cutting machines have been able to be used to cut a variety of materials since their inception, they are still rarely used to cut copper materials. In recent years, the application in cutting copper products is becoming popular. More and more customers need to cut copper products. Since copper is a highly reflective metal, it is difficult for laser cutting machines to go through the cutting work, but that does not mean it is completely impossible. So why is it difficult for laser cutting machines to cut want with such reflective metals? Baiwei Xiaobian summarized the following reasons:
1. their low absorption of infrared laser light makes these metals difficult to cut.
2. copper and brass (copper-zinc alloys) are good reflectors (and therefore poor absorbers) of infrared (IR) laser light, especially in the solid state
3. pure copper in its solid state reflects > 95% of NIR radiation (~ 1 µm wavelength).
4. The reflectivity of copper and other reflective metals decreases as the metal warms up and drops dramatically once the material melts (e.g., to <70% for copper in the molten state), and these metals absorb significantly more laser energy in the molten state.
An important solution for cutting highly reflective materials is the addition of auxiliary gases. When cutting copper metal with fiber laser cutting machines, the added auxiliary gases react with the material under high temperature conditions to increase the cutting speed, for example, the use of oxygen can achieve a combustion effect. Nitrogen is used in laser cutting equipment to improve the cutting effect of the auxiliary gas, for copper materials less than 1MM, the use of metal laser cutting machine can be completely processed. Therefore, when using fiber laser cutting machine, do not have to worry about whether you can cut, this time to pay attention to the processing effect, so nitrogen as an auxiliary gas is the best. When the thickness of copper reaches 2MM, it cannot be processed with nitrogen, and then it is necessary to add oxygen for oxidation to achieve cutting. Through the above explanation, you should know how the fiber laser cutting machine is cutting copper material, in fact, when cutting, the focus is not whether we can cut the material, how much to cut in an hour, but about the accuracy of cutting, how to control the cutting accuracy of fiber laser cutting machine is the most important.
