For Your CO2 Laser Cutting Application
Technical Paper Overview
Choosing CO₂ Laser Beam Delivery: Scan Head vs Cut Head
Beam delivery, not laser source, decides whether your cut works.
The CO₂ laser source is half the equation. The other half — the half that decides whether your cut succeeds — is how the beam gets to the material. Scan head or cut head. Galvo-steered or gantry-mounted. No assist gas or coaxial gas jet. The same source delivers razor-clean cuts on one system and charred edges on another.
This technical paper documents three test comparisons — card-stock flower patterns, 0.25 mm acrylic film, 1 mm PETG panel — to show where scan head wins (on-the-fly converting, intricate shapes, hard-to-reach geometry) and where cut head wins (thick materials, smaller spot sizes, vertical edges, assist-gas cooling). A 7-criteria decision matrix resolves the choice for any new application.
Key takeaways include:
- Why the same Synrad CO₂ laser produces dramatically different cut quality on scan-head vs cut-head delivery
- How material absorption (vaporization, melt shearing, chemical degradation) drives the delivery-method choice
- When to choose scan head: on-the-fly converting at 50-100 m/min, intricate shapes (5× faster than cut head)
- What cut head delivers that scan head can’t: 100 µm spot, coaxial assist gas, vertical edges, thick-material cuts
- A practical 7-criteria decision matrix to apply to any CO₂ laser cutting application before specification
Download the full technical paper for the three test cases (card stock, acrylic, PETG), the material-interaction physics behind each delivery choice, and the 7-criteria decision matrix you can use to specify the right beam delivery for any CO₂ cutting application.
