Scaling back: Removing laser scale from ferrous metal parts
With the popularity of laser cutting, many of you are running across a material on the parts that you're unfamiliar with or are familiar with but don't know how to remove. That material is called laser scale, which is formed during the laser cutting process. This article describes what laser scale is, how it is formed, and how to get rid of it to prevent rejects.
As the popularity of CNC laser cutting machines has increased over the past several years, manufacturers have been faced with the necessary evil of removing the scale created during the cutting process. To understand thoroughly why it's important to remove laser scale from your fabricated parts and how it can best be removed, you need to know how laser scale is formed, how it can be minimized, and how it differs from another common scale, mill scale.