Application analysis of laser cutting glass
12 Jul , 2021
Chris
9200
The infrared laser absorption of glass is far better than that of metal, and glass is a poor conductor of heat, so the laser power needed for glass cutting is much lower than that of metal, so the laser cutting technology of glass should be applied
The infrared laser absorption of glass is far better than that of metal, and glass is a poor conductor of heat, so the laser power needed for glass cutting is much lower than that of metal, so the laser cutting technology of glass should be applied to industrial production earlier than metal.But the glass laser cutting market has not been developed.The reason may be that the cutting of glass is relatively easy. The traditional diamond knife wheel or cemented carbide knife wheel glass cutting technology has developed very maturely, and the process is simple and the cost is low, which is enough to meet the requirements of ordinary glass cutting.
Glass has the physical characteristics of hard and brittle, so how not to damage the glass substrate when cutting and how to eliminate the glass edge defects after cutting has been a breakthrough in all walks of life.Traditional glass cutting is achieved by direct machining of wheel tool to the desired size, but the biggest problem of wheel tool cutting is the loss of the tool, especially in the face of high hardness of the glass cutting, the loss of the tool is particularly serious;In addition, mechanical cutting will produce mechanical stress, which will cause the edge damage of the material. Besides, as the substrate thickness gets thinner and thinner, various kinds of cracks caused by cutting will increase rapidly, which will seriously affect the quality and yield of cutting process. Therefore, subsequent edge grinding shall be used after cutting to reduce edge cracks.However, when the thickness of ultra-thin glass is less than 0.2 mm, due to the relative fragility of the material, the use of machinery to cut or grind the edge will be too narrow with the scope of force applied to effectively control, so it is necessary to gradually introduce the laser process to solve the relevant problems.
The laser cutting technology of glass has many advantages compared with the traditional cutting technology. The edge of the glass cut by laser is smooth, without transverse micro-crack and fragmentation, which avoids scratches on the plate and reduces the possibility of glass breaking to the minimum.When the laser technology is used in the line cutting of float glass production line, the utilization rate of the original plate glass is obviously improved because there is no need for the second edge breaking.Using laser technology to cut glass 125mm thick will not cause any stress problems, nor any adjustment error.In addition, due to the high fracture resistance of laser-cut glass, there is no need to toughen the glass in many cases.
Laser beam glass cutting adopts controllable glass cracking technology and combines heating and cooling, which can not only achieve high quality cutting edge, but also reduce the problem of microcracking as much as possible.The cutting steps of seamless laser glass include: heating the glass surface with laser beam;The compressive stress of glass surface is increased, but its surface is not damaged.Use coolant to cool the surface of the cutting line;The sudden change of temperature causes higher tensile stress on glass surface.It eventually cracks on the glass plate.
As a brittle material with uniform texture, good transparency, smooth surface and corrosion resistance, glass has been widely used in scientific research and industrial and agricultural production.Especially in recent years, with the rapid development of IT industry, liquid crystal display and plasma display and other high-tech electronic products emerge as The Times require, the cutting quality of glass products is more and more high.Glass has been widely used, and glass cutting is one of the key technologies. Because laser beam has high brightness, high directivity, high monochromatism and high coherence, laser cutting glass has higher advantages than traditional methods.