- Joined
- Sep 15, 2002
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- 10,279
My understanding is that heat treating causes some distortion in the steel. Insofar as the distortion has already occurred prior to being cut with a laser, the end product is much more "consistent" throughout. In other words, the laser eliminates most shape distortion caused by the HT. Also, cutting with a laser creates more stresses on steel than cutting say... by waterjet. Generally speaking, the thinner the steel, the more impacted it will be by laser cutting. I ***think*** that because the steel has been hardened, it is less susceptible to laser processing distortion than its softer "un-heat-treated" counterpart.
BTW, I am NOT an engineer, but I do play one on TV!
Yeah, you only wire-cut the final Tooling steel to size. HT afterwards will cause small but uncontrollable dimensional changes. -That's what my Mechanical Engineer tells me at least.