AUTOMATED CHARACTERIZATION OF THE MATERIAL REMOVAL RATE IN LASER MANUFACTURING OF TIAL6V4 AND INCONEL 718

In this paper a system for the automatic determination of the material removal rate during laser milling process is presented. ”Laser milling” can be defined as an engraving process with a strictly controlled penetration depth. In industrial applications, when a new material have to be machined or a change in the system set-up occur the user has to perform a time-consuming experimental campaign in order to determine the correlation between the material removal rate and the process parameters. In these cases the numerical models present some limits due to the elevated calculation time requested to simulate the laser milling of industrial features. In the proposed system, based on a regression model approach, the empirical coefficients, that provide the material removal rate, are automatically generated by a specific software according to the different materials that have to be processed. A description of the automated method and the results obtained in engraving TiAl6V4 and Inconel 718 superalloy with a fiber laser are presented. The system can be adapted to every combination of material/laser source.