Glass is an important industrial material. It has a long history of thousands of years in China. It not only enriches our living world, but also promotes the development of civil society. At present, glass has been used in many industries of the national economy, such as automobile industry, construction industry, medical treatment, display, electronic products (such as small optical filters as small as several microns), glass substrate of notebook flat panel display and automobile industry. And large glass plates are used in large manufacturing fields such as architecture. There are many kinds of glass. Soda lime glass is a kind of common glass, also known as alkali glass. It is mainly used in automobile industry, construction industry and household appliances.

Glass is a relatively transparent solid material, which forms a continuous network structure when melting, gradually increases viscosity during cooling, and hardens and crystallizes silicate based non-metallic materials. The remarkable feature of glass is that it is hard and fragile, which brings great difficulties to processing. Nowadays, the quality of glass products is required to be higher and higher, and more accurate and refined processing results must be achieved. The traditional method of glass processing is mechanical knife cutting. However, mechanical knife cutting has the disadvantages of low efficiency, poor effect, fragile, easy passivation, damage and replacement. It is difficult to achieve the requirements of no microcrack and edge quality, so technical innovation in glass cutting is urgently needed.

Application of Laser Cutting Machine in Glass

Nowadays, with the progress of laser technology, laser can realize more and more functions, such as precision drilling, fine cutting, selective material removal, etc., and there are more new applications. New concepts are being proposed, practiced and introduced into industrial production. Laser is an ideal tool for micro precision machining of various materials. It has no force directly acting on the workpiece and is not easy to damage the product. Therefore, it has the advantages of good cutting quality, no emission, no waste and environmental protection.

The laser cutting machine uses a focused high power density laser beam to irradiate the workpiece, so that the irradiated material can quickly melt, vaporize, ablate or reach the flash point. At the same time, the high-speed airflow coaxial with the beam will blow away the molten material, thus cutting the workpiece. Laser cutting is one of the thermal cutting methods. In the process of laser cutting, there is no contact between the cutting torch and the workpiece, and the tool is not worn. In addition, the laser cutting process has the advantages of low noise, small vibration and no pollution.

Application of Laser Cutting Machine in Glass

There are two methods for laser glass cutting: one is melt cutting. The molten glass has good plasticity and ductility at softening temperature, and can be irradiated to the softened glass surface by focused CO2 laser or ultraviolet laser. The higher energy density causes the glass to melt, and then the molten glass is blown away by the air flow to form a groove, thereby realizing the melting cutting of the glass. The second method is crack control, which is a common laser cutting method. First of all, when the laser heats the glass surface, higher energy will cause a sharp rise in the temperature of the glass surface, and the surface will generate greater compressive stress, but will not cause glass fracture. The area is then rapidly cooling, usually with cooling gas or coolant. Nowadays, CO2 laser is usually used in glass cutting technology. When selecting a suitable laser, factors such as wavelength, output power, beam mode, flexibility, cost, reliability and whether it is conducive to system integration should be considered.