Simulation tool for laser cutting process impact on various materials

Purpose and goal

With this project Tomologic wanted to increase the production reliability for our customers by addressing two related problems. (1) Automatic verification of customers´ cutting plans with regards to unsafe accumulation of heat, and (2) efficient parameter value optimization for our cutting constraints with the purpose of optimizing the trade-off between production reliability and cost savings.

Expected results and effects

Tomologic now has a working prototype that has been proven to work in a production setting by identifying and fixing heat related issues for some of our customers. We have also used this system to optimize several distance constraints with the most significant impact to material usage which directly increases the customers´ savings.

Planned approach and implementation

The project was initiated by evaluating existing research about heat conduction in metal given a laser source. The next step was to develop a model that would provide enough accuracy with a moving laser source and with a dynamic dispersion geometry. After this, we evaluated the model by comparing limits in the model with observations in real life. The model was subsequently used as the core in a newly developed parameter-optimization-system designed for our proprietary cutting constraints to ensure production reliability while maintaining maximal savings for the customer.