Compensating thermal expansion via tool path correction during fusion laser cutting of Al5754

Abstract Aluminum alloys are widely used in advanced manufacturing, with laser cutting offering a fast and flexible solution for processing both tubular and sheet formats. Since laser cutting is a thermal process, a fraction of the energy released is transferred to the material through conductive heat losses, resulting in a temperature increase that may affect cut quality and dimensional accuracy of the manufactured parts. The present study examines the effect of processed material temperature variations on cut quality and dimensional accuracy of manufactured parts in laser fusion cutting of aluminum alloys. Laser cut samples of varying thicknesses (2 mm, 5 mm and 8 mm) were analysed at different preheating levels to establish a correlation with base material temperature. While experimental results indicated that part quality (evaluated in terms of dross height and surface roughness) was not significantly affected by temperature variation, substantial deviations in dimensional accuracy were observed, with errors reaching up to 1.2 mm. Dimensional errors due to tool dimension and temperature variations were analytically estimated, leading to the development of a predictive compensation strategy. The application of this approach successfully reduced thermally induced dimensional errors, with experimental results demonstrating improvements in the accuracy of the manufactured parts and dimensional deviations maintained within the acceptable machine tolerance range of $$\pm$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mo>±</mml:mo> </mml:math> 0.1 mm.