The coronary stent fabrication requires a high-precision profile cut. Fibre lasers present a solution to accomplish these requirements. This paper presents an experimental study of fibre laser cutting of 316L stainless steel thin sheets. The effect of peak pulse power, pulse frequency and cutting speed on the cutting quality for fixed gas type and gas pressure was investigated. A mathematical model based on energy balances for the dross dimensions was formulated. The dross height and the dross diameter were analysed and compared with the experimental results. This allows adjustment of the process parameters to reduce the dimensions of the dross deposited at the bottom of the workpiece during laser cutting of thin sheets

The authors would like to express their gratitude to the GREP research group from the UdG and to the Tecnologico de Monterrey for the facilities provided during the experiments. This work was partially carried out with the grant supports from the European Commission project IREBID (FP7-PEOPLE-2009-IRSES-247476) and the Spanish Science and Innovation Minister project TECNIPLAD (DPI2009-09852)