How to avoid equipment damage when cutting highly reflective materials (such as copper and aluminum)?

Highly reflective materials pose a great threat to lasers, and multiple protective measures need to be taken:

Hardware level: Install a polarizer or beam diffuser to deviate the scattering direction of the reflected light from the optical element. Some high-end equipment can use an "angle cutting head" to make the laser beam incident at 15°~30° to reduce vertical reflection energy.

Process adjustment: Use pulse mode instead of continuous wave, for example, set the duty cycle to 30%~50%, and control the peak power within the material absorption threshold (copper is recommended to be less than 500W). At the same time, increase the cutting speed (for example, the cutting speed of aluminum plates needs to be 20% faster than that of stainless steel) to avoid heat accumulation.

Monitoring and maintenance: Install an infrared sensor on the cutting head to monitor the intensity of reflected light in real time, and immediately cut off the laser once it exceeds the safety threshold. The back coating of the focusing mirror must be checked after each processing. If ablation points (diameter>0.5mm) are found, they must be replaced immediately.

Note: Do not try to cut unanodized aluminum or polished copper plates. The reflectivity of such materials exceeds 90%, which is very likely to cause equipment failure!