Would cooling metal help reduce melting?

[Jacob John]

Kind of a curious question more than anything. If you were able to sufficiently cool the metal you're trying to cut, would it reduce or eliminate melting? I'm guinea pigging myself right now, cutting brass, stainless steel, etc. and in testing settings, I notice that sometimes it gets a bulgy look near the edges, which I assume is caused by overheating/melting of the metal itself. I guess I could increase the speed, increase frequency, but beyond that, do you think cooling it would even be effective? I could rig up a port to blow cold air directly on the metal while it's cutting, but I'm not going through that hassle unless I'd get a net positive there.

[Kev Williams]

I've cut mylar while floating it on water in an attempt to eliminate the mushroomed edge I was getting, and it didn't help a bit...

I remember Dave mentioning something about a C02's wavelength has something to do with the not-so-perfect edge, so cutting cold mylar may be different than cutting cold metal as to the slag, but still, I think the sheer amount of localized heat at the beam spot, even under water, is going to be hard to temper down...

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[Dave Sheldrake]

Nope, won't help at all, the reality is to cut metal properly you need minimum 300 watts in a Fibre and better still 500 to 750 watts.

No substitute for raw power and fast gas to be honest :)