A carbon fiber reinforced plastic [CFRP] is widely used for automobile, aircraft and so on, because of high strength, lightweight and weather resistance. The cutting of CFRP is difficult since it is composed of complex matrix of carbon fiber and epoxy resin. In this paper, CFRP was cut with a nanosecond laser of 1064 nm in wavelength. The ablation plume of CFRP was investigated by a high speed video camera and a spectrometer under the laser irradiation. From the results, it was clarified that the ablation dynamics differed with an increase in the laser shot number. It was confirmed that the ablation rate was 0.028 μg/pulse in good agreement with the calculation value of 0.03 μg/pulse.
