How to choose the auxiliary gas of laser cutting machine

The laser cutting machine needs to use auxiliary gas to blow away the slag produced in the cutting process. Not only that, the auxiliary gas can also cool the surface of the processed object, reduce the heat-affected zone, cool the focusing lens, and prevent smoke from entering the lens seat to contaminate the lens and cause the lens to overheat. So what auxiliary gas can the laser cutting machine use? Let’s take a look at what kind of auxiliary gas should be selected when cutting different materials.

① Air. Air is a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and other gases, the collection method is relatively simple, the use of air compressor compressed into the gas storage tank, after filtration, cooling and drying treatment can be extracted, the cost is less. Mainly used in laser cutting machine for metal sheet processing, relying on the energy of the laser to melt the metal workpiece, the use of high pressure to blow away the melt, the use of air to assist cutting the workpiece section will produce oxidation reaction, the formation of metal oxides. It is mainly suitable for cutting carbon steel, aluminum alloy, brass, aluminum, electroplated steel plate and other metal materials.

② Oxygen. In the laser cutting machine working oxygen can play a combustion effect, cutting process oxygen reaction heat, can greatly improve the cutting efficiency, the resulting oxide film will improve the reflective material beam spectral absorption index, so that the laser energy is more effectively used, speed up the cutting speed of the laser cutting machine, mainly suitable for thick plate cutting, such as stainless steel, carbon steel, alloy metal and so on.

③ Nitrogen. Because the chemical properties of nitrogen are not active, nitrogen is not easy to oxidize with the workpiece when the laser cutting machine is working, which can effectively prevent the oxidation free cutting of the oxide film, and the incision surface is white. The use of nitrogen cutting requires higher purity. Nitrogen can be used for auxiliary cutting of workpieces with high cutting surface quality requirements. It is mainly used for cutting stainless steel, brass, electroplated steel plate, aluminum and other metal materials.
④ Argon gas. Argon is also an inert gas, its chemical properties are not active, and it is not easy to oxidize the workpiece, which is mainly suitable for cutting titanium alloy materials. However, compared with other auxiliary gases, the use of high costs, so laser cutting machines generally rarely choose argon as an auxiliary gas.

Special attention should be paid to the fact that if you choose to use air as an auxiliary gas, you should ensure that there is no water, oil and dust in the compressed air, so as to avoid the optical lens of the laser cutting machine being polluted, so that the laser cutting machine pipeline deviates or has impenetrability during the cutting process.