Prediction of the Effect of CO2 Laser Cutting Conditions on Spruce Wood Cut Characteristics Using an Artificial Neural Network

Abstract

In addition to traditional chip methods, performance lasers are often used in the field of wood processing. When cutting wood with CO2 lasers, it is primarily the area of optimization of parameters that is important, which include mainly laser performance and cutting speed. They have a significant impact on the production efficiency and cut quality. The article deals with the use of an artificial neural network (ANN) to predict spruce wood cut characteristics using CO2 lasers under several conditions. The mutual impact of the laser performance (P) and the number of annual circles (AR) for prediction of the characteristics of the cutting kerf and the heat affected zone (HAZ) were examined. For this purpose, the artificial neural network in Statistica 12 software was used. The predicted parameters can be used to qualitatively characterize the cutting kerf properties of the spruce wood cut by CO2 lasers. All the predictions are in good agreement with the results from the available literary sources. The laser power P = 200 W provides a good cutting quality in terms of cutting kerf widths ratio defined as the ratio of cutting kerf width at the lower board to the cutting kerf width at upper board and, therefore, they are optimal for cutting spruce wood at 1.210−2 ms−1.

Optimization of Laser Cutting Parameters for PMMA Using Metaheuristic Algorithms

“…The ANN with multilayer perceptron (MLP) architecture is proposed to determine, predict and analyze the dominant parameters in the CO 2 laser cutting of PMMA sheets in [42]. Ružiak et al [43] proposed the exploit of an ANN to predict the characteristics of the cutting kerf and the HAZ considering the common impact of laser performance and annual circle number during cutting spruce wood using CO 2 laser. Kechagias et al [44] implemented a feedforward and backpropagation neural network (FFBP-NN) to optimize the kerf width and kerf angle at different distances from the surface during cutting PMMA sheets with a lowpower CO 2 laser.…”

Optimization of Tensile Strength in the Paper Material Cutting Process Based on CO2 Laser Process Parameters

“…Although invented in 1960 [ 1 ], laser technology is still considered to be a new innovative tool in manufacturing industries, and the conventional manufacturing methods remain present and widely used. As a widespread technology with distinguish efficiency and accuracy, as well as a promising future, laser cutting has been extensively applied in the cutting of various materials: wood-based materials [ 2 , 3 ], concrete [ 4 ], cement-based materials [ 5 , 6 ], polymeric materials, such as polymethyl methacrylate [ 7 , 8 , 9 ], polypropylene [ 8 ], and polystyrene [ 10 ], as well as various metallic materials: stainless steel [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ], carbon steel [ 17 ], aluminum alloy [ 17 ], and metallic plates [ 18 ]. The first use of the laser in the paper industry dates back to the 1970s, when laser was introduced for perforating cigarette paper, cutting paper, and paperboard [ 19 ].…”