Technological study of laser cutting silicon steel controlled by rotating gas flow

Using traditional laser cutting technology, it is easy to produce molten slag in laser cutting silicon steel sheet. The main reason is the inevitable oxidizing reaction in the process caused by the use of oxygen as the aided gas. As a common solution, high pressure and high purity N2 or an inert gas is therefore used instead of oxygen. Although the cut quality is improved, the cutting efficiency is reduced because of the lack of energy generated from an exothermic oxidation reaction. The technology used in this paper is to employ a newly developed cyclone slag separator. The slag separator is located under the workpiece to form rotating gas flow for controlling the direction of the flowing slag gas. Adopting the new technology reported here, oxygen is still used as the aided gas. The experiments prove that, by controlling the technical parameters reasonably tightly, glossy and dross-free cutting kerfs are obtained for reduced laser power. The gas flow acting under the workpiece is simulated using the finite element method (FEM). The operating law of the rotating gas flow is verified by ANSYS, which provides an academic basis for controlling the flowing direction of the slag gas.