Surface quality finish in laser cutting using Taguchi design

Abstract

The present work aims at obtaining parametric combination to achieve the best surface finish and assess effects of selected process parameters on a laser cut quality for laser cutting. This helps to study the variation in response parameter (Ra value) for various levels of selected process parameters. In the present work mild steel specimen is used and the effect of the key parameters such as laser pulse frequency (pulse repetition rate), laser pulse width and cutting speed on surface finish are critically analysed. For experimental design and parametric analysis robust design is used i.e. a fractional factorial experimental design with an appropriate orthogonal array followed by variance and sound to noise ratio analysis.

Keywords

• cutting speed
• factorial design
• laser pulse width
• orthogonal array
• pulse repetition rate (PRR) or pulse frequency