Laser cutting of composite sandwich structures

The paper describes a method of cutting housings of refrigerating appliances with a CO2 laser, as a stage of their disassembly during recycling. The housings are made of laminar “sandwich” composites with low susceptibility to be processed after withdrawal from use. The problems of their utilization result from difficulties to separate the three materials making individual layers of the composite, i.e. metal, foamed polyurethane and a thermoplastic material. In the suggested method of cutting with laser beam, utilized are significant differences between melting points and flash points of these materials. Implementation of this method makes it possible to recover from waste housings sections of any shape, which could be reused with regard to their maintained insulating and mechanical properties (rigidity, compression strength).