Aerospace manufacturing has historically been hesitant to adopt laser processing for components, despite its proven success in automotive and other industries. Historical barriers have included material distortion and residual stress, surface quality concerns, regulatory challenges designating laser cutting as a "special process," and limited manufacturing expertise. These factors have complicated adoption despite laser technology's potential benefits in efficiency and design flexibility.

Recent advances in beam delivery and control systems have positioned laser cutting as an ideal process for aerospace manufacturing due to its precision, versatility, and sustainability through minimal material waste. In this work, we present new laser cutting trials on typical aerospace-grade sheet metals, including Aluminum 6061 T6, Inconel 718, Ti-6Al-4V, and 316L stainless steel, performed on a TruLaser Cell 3000 using a 4 kW fiber laser.

Our results demonstrate significant improvements in cut quality metrics, with minimal recast layers, reduced visible defects, and controlled heat-affected zones across all materials tested. The process successfully enabled complex geometries with clean, precise edges while achieving substantial reductions in production time and material waste compared to conventional cutting methods. These findings demonstrate laser cutting's readiness for high-quality aerospace manufacturing applications and provide practical implementation guidance for laser users considering aerospace market entry.

For the ICALEO community, this work offers concrete evidence that modern laser cutting technology can meet aerospace industry requirements while delivering the efficiency and flexibility advantages that have driven adoption in other sectors.