Metal cutting is “the process of removing unwanted material in the form of chips, from a block of metal, using a cutting tool”. A person who specializes in machining is called a machinist. A room, building or company where machining is done is called a Machine Shop
The process of metal cutting involves the removal of excess material from a workpiece in the form of a chip using a wedge-shaped tool. To eliminate the geometrical complications of practical machining processes, a simplified model known as 2-D orthogonal cutting is often employed to study the basic mechanics of machining.
Laser cutting works by having a high-powered, highly-focused laser beam run through a material, leaving a clean cut with a smooth finish. This beam can be either pulsed, meaning the cut is delivered in pulses, or continuous wave, meaning the beam is kept focused on the material until the cut is delivered.
Cutting with lasers starts by piercing the material with a hole, and then continues the cut from there. The beam intensity, length and heat output can be controlled, allowing the cut to be delivered in different ways and in different times.
The process is, in some ways, similar to drilling and engraving. Drilling involves the creation of popped ‘thru-holes’ in materials, but occasionally these holes are created as dents rather than thru-holes. These dents, acting like engravings, are also considered ‘cuts’ in a material.
Cutting is a technique in which the operator moves a material (workpiece) such as metal and the tool in relation to one another in order to shape the workpiece into the desired shape via shaving, drilling, and so on.
Machining: A general term for all material-removal processes. Metal cutting is the process of removing a thin layer of excess metal (chip) from a work piece using a wedge-shaped single-point or multipoint cutting tool with defined geometry and extensive plastic deformation.
Workpiece, tool (including holding devices), chips, and cutting fluid are all involved in any cutting process. A wedge-shaped tool is constrained to move relative to the work-piece in order to remove the metal in the form of chips.