Page 170 - Industrial Cutting of Textile Materials
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Automated laser cutting of textile materials 157
Fig. 10.5 Shuttle-type work surface.
On a horizontally placed static or conveyorized surface, a cutting table keeps the
treated material flat during the work process. It also supports an extraction system
that evacuates cutting gas with smoke particles and soiling and keeps the cut material
fixed during the work process. There are three main parts of the cutting table: a cutting
surface, an extraction system, and an emission filtering system.
10.3.1 Cutting surface
When processing flexible materials, such as textiles, a cutting surface has several
functions:
It has to keep the textile material flat and fixed during the work process.
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It has to minimize maximally ‘reflection burns’.
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It has to support the extraction system of the cutter to lead away the cutting emissions
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(see Section 10.3.2).
As the laser beam cuts through the material, it hits the work surface and reflects
back to the reverse side of the material causing what is called a ‘reflection burn’. To
avoid fully this negative effect, the laser beam should go through the material freely
not having any reflecting surface under it. However, because of the flexible structure
of textiles, they cannot be kept flat during the work process without any kind of the
supporting surface under them.
Taking into account the described functions of the cutting surface and the type of
job to be performed, metal plates, perforated or not, and grid kind of working surfaces
are used for processing textiles.
10.3.1.1 Metal plate
Perforated or not perforated metal plate (see Fig. 10.6A) is used on static tables to
perform material engraving and marking (see Section 10.6.3) when the laser beam
affects only the surface of the textile material not going fully through it. Very thin
fabrics also can be cut on the metal plate because they require very low laser power.
By use of surface perforation, vacuum/extraction system also keeps the material fixed
and evacuates the cutting emissions.
