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174 Industrial Cutting of Textile Materials
10.9.2 Textiles of synthetic origin (polyester, nylon,
polyamide, others)
When cutting synthetic materials, the laser beam melts material edges and with it
protects them from frying. Engraved marks in the synthetic fabrics are usually slightly
glossy and darker in contrast to the material surface.
10.9.3 Cutting intricate textiles
There are several kinds of fabrics whose processing by manual or automated knife
cutting methods is problematic. Their cutting by laser is more effective as it ensures
higher quality and cutting speed.
10.9.3.1 Textiles with pile
Because of the pile that must not be compressed and cut/damaged during cutting process,
this kind of fabrics are usually cut manually, separating their backing/substrate material
by scissors (see Chapter 18). Contactless laser cutting is performed from the left side of
the material keeping it in uncompressed way. Individual strands creating pile of the fur
remain intact, while laser cuts only the backing material in high speed and quality.
10.9.3.2 Velcro
Because of Velcro material's dual structure, knife cutting is difficult and cannot give
high precision. The same as textiles with pile, Velcro is cut easy by laser from its
reverseside separating only its base material. Laser processing ensures much higher
cutting quality and speed.
10.9.3.3 Very light materials
Lightweight fabrics may be distorted moving or dragging by blade tools during the
processing. Using laser, high-precision and high-speed cutting is performed in contact-
free way without clamping or fixing material in any other ways.
10.9.3.4 Textiles with intricate patterns, digitally printed fabrics
Because the automated pattern-matching methods developed till now ensure a simple
fabric ply effective processing (see Section 16.4.3), laser cutting is more effective than
knife cutting. It can be performed in higher speed keeping the fabric ply in uncom-
pressed way.
10.10 Laser cutting for technical textiles
In processing technical textiles, laser cutters have three main advantages over blade cut-
ters. The first one is laser cutting in noncontact cutting where material fixing by vacuum
system is not necessary; cutting is frictionless; and, because of it, any shape can be easy
to cut out. The second advantage is that a laser beam seals the cut edges of synthetic