Technologies for Getting Good Corners

In general, you would get bad quality when cutting sharp corners on thin materials in high speed, and on thick materials in low speed, especially on mild steel with O₂ as the assist gas because too much heat accumulated up there in a very small area which results in over burnt.

CypCut provides several functions to solve this problem from different points of view. If the geometry of a corner has to be kept precisely, you can use the cooling point or the ring cut functions; otherwise, you can use the fillet function, and incorporate the relief function if the part is prepared for bending.

Cooling Point

The cooling point function is to add stops in the cutting process and let the assist gas help cool the material down a little more.

Select the contours and then select the command Auto Cooling Point in the pulldown-menu Home>Cooling Point.

In the pop-up dialog, check the option Add at leadin if you want to set a cooling point at the start position, check the option Add at corner if you want to set cooling points at sharp corners and set the angle range in the option Max angle.

Cooling points appear as small circles when the contours are selected, and as solid ones when not.

You can also set cooling points by hand. Select the command Cooling Point in Home, the cursor will appear in a small dashed circle, and click on the contours to set cooling points until press the Esc key or select the command Cancel Cooling Point in the context menu.

If you are not happy with the cooling points and want to make a change or just delete one or some of them, press the Shift key when running the cooling point function, the cursor will appear in a small square, and click on the cooling points you want to remove. And, you can select the command Clear Cooling Point in the pulldown-menu Home>Cooling Point to remove all cooling points.

Ring Cut

The ring cut function adds extra travel paths on corners and the laser head will slow down then speed up there out of corners, help improve the geometry precision and the quality of corners when cutting thin materials in high speed.

Select the contours and then select the command Ring Cut in Home.

In the pop-up dialog, set the angle range of corners in the option Max angle, set the size of extra travel paths in the option Min length and Extend length, check the option Laser off for ring paths if you want to turn off the laser on the paths.

Ring cuts appear as dashed with laser off and as solid with laser on.

If you are not happy with the ring cuts and want to make a change, just select the contours and select the command Ring Cut again, and give it a try with different settings. If you want to delete the ring cuts, just click on the button Clear path in the dialog.

Fillet and Relief

The fillet function converts sharp corners to round ones.

Select the command Fillet in Home.

Set the radius of round corners in the pop-up dialog and then click on the corners you want to convert.

The relief function adds relieves on corners, avoiding warping when bending.

Select the command Relief in Home.

Set the radius of relieves in the pop-up dialog and then click on the corners you want to process.