Laser Cut Carbon Fiber Cloth

Even though carbon fiber has a very high tensile strength it has only moderate shear strength so it is fairly easy to cut.

Laser cut carbon fiber cloth.

What we used was a pair of scissors. Do not use a laser cutter as it will not work any carbon fiber. Laser cutting carbon fiber can be done with either a co 2 laser or a fiber laser but the highest quality cut is achieved when using multiwave hybrid technology which combines a 10 6 micron wavelength co 2 laser beam and a 1 06 micron fiber laser beam into a single hybrid laser beam. The laser melts the epoxy much faster than it can have an impact on the carbon fibers.

For metals it is known that during gas assisted laser cutting fusion cutting the laser beam heats the material while the gas jet blows the molten material out of the cut kerf 7. The reason they use something like a laser cutter or a shear is that this provides a mo. This results in a very poor cut line and very few broken fibers.