Can you cut carbide or high speed steel with lasers?

Factual Questions
1

Googling and visiting mfr webistes hasn’t given me any satisfactory answers. Can it be done?

(Need not be mounted on head of friggin’ shark)

capn

2

Yes. The hardness of a steel is not a significant factor in cutting with laser or plasma processes. I could see water cutting being more difficult, or at least requiring a harder ceramic in the stream, and of course physical cutting is very difficult.

3
      • Well… water jets are really just for sheet-cutting, not doing 3-D machining. And carbide and HSS don’t come in sheets, not commonly. So waterjets are probably not suitable.
  • Lasers can do either sheet-cutting or 3-D work, depending on the setup–but many places doing complex stuff in metals prefer EDM because it avoids heating up the work.
    ~
4

Did some Googling about EDM - this looks like it might be more versatile to us than laser cutting.

Anyone ever use one?

Thanks crew.
capn