OPTIMIZATION OF LASER CUTTING ENGRAVING PERFORMANCE ONACRYLIC MATERIALS USING TAGUCHI METHOD APPROACH

Abstract

Today's laser cutting machining process is often utilized in large industries as well as
individual and student science projects. Acrylic is one of the materials in which the
processing involves a lot of laser cutting, but currently many laser cutting processes,
especially the low low powers, are not optimally optimized. In this study, the author
wants to optimize laser cutting with the power of 6.5 watts using the Taguchi
optimization method on solid black acrylic material with a thickness of 3 mm, with
the reference to the surface roughness value of the workpiece after being subjected
to the laser cutting process using the Ra unit. The control factors included are laser
distance, laser power, cutting speed aand , ancoolinging time. The experimental
process was carried out 27 times with replication of measurements 2 times. The best
result from the experiment was the roughness measurement value of 0.782 μm while
the mean roughness value was 2.271 μm. After condexperimenting is known that the
best results are obtained with a laser distance factor of 20.6mm, cutting speed of 70
mm/min, laser power owatt wa ts ,and cooling time,e of 10 s. Meanwhile, the effect
of factors on the surface roughness results is the laser distance 27%, cuttingneedof
eed 40.9laserr ower 18.9coolingolingme 7.05%. After calibrating the laser cutting,
the cutting accuracy increased from ± 1mm to ± 0.4 mm o,r an increase of 60%,
with an average final dimension measurement of 24.87 mm.