Problems of Quality Assurance and Selection of Control Criteria in Laser Cutting Operations of Wood and Wood-Like Materials

The paper presents the problem of quality assurance of the laser cutting process of wood and wood-like materials and the selection of optimal processing conditions with respect to the required evaluation criteria. An experiment conducted to identify processing difficulties and potential causes of defects is described. Samples of three materials: pine wood, hardwood plywood and mixed wood HDF with a thickness of 4 mm were cut with a CO2 laser and visually inspected and the width of the slit was measured. It was found that there was a relationship between the laser operating parameters and the obtained slit width. The higher the cutting speed, the narrower the slit. The obtained numerical results allowed to formulate technological guidelines on the selection of laser parameters depending on the material. In turn, based on the visual inspection, defects depending on the material properties were identified. An example of a non-conformity identification manual was developed, which includes illustrations to enable comparative analysis in production. It was found that in the studied process, different criteria can be adopted to qualify a product as compliant or non-compliant. A dilemma may then arise as to which criterion is more important. Therefore, a quality evaluation criteria verification sheet was proposed. Furthermore, due to the fact that the success of the laser cutting process is also dependent on other factors, a list of risks to the process was made.