Laser cutting has massive advantages over alternative metal cutting methods, providing the precision and power that helps businesses produce results on an unprecedented scale! As a constantly developing field, laser cutting only continues to offer more benefits as it grows. The latest technology means you can get the best quality cut, at rapid speeds and at an affordable price&#;
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We recently announced news of our second 10kW laser installed at Laser 24, which has bolstered our laser cutting services. In this post, our Director Iain Summerfield explains some of the main benefits of laser cutting and how Laser 24 is continuously adapting to &#;power up&#; and add value to every business it encounters.
The advantages of laser cutting over alternative methods include:
- Cuts non-ferrous material with ease
- Reliable and fast machinery for rapid turnaround
- Uses less energy when cutting &#; using nitrogen, oxygen, air
- Cuts through the thickest of metals &#; including mild steel
- Cut complex shapes with precise detail
- Non-wearing for a flawless edge finish
Read on for more benefits of laser cutting.
Cost & Quality: affordable laser cutting solutions for the best cut
Plasma or water was traditionally seen as more cost effective than laser cutting, although these methods don&#;t provide anywhere near the quality of a laser cut. However, the improvements in power, efficiency, and technology mean laser cutting can match or even supersede the value of alternative methods!
It depends on the intricacies of the requirement, but laser cutting is quicker and cleaner, with less heat distortion, which means there is less to do after it is cut, easier to work with, and ready for our customers to use!
Material Capabilities: fibre laser cutting vs waterjet cutting
Waterjet cutting is another alternative metal cutting solution. There was no significant overlap between laser and waterjet cutting until recently, as they were historically used for different cutting methods depending on the profile of the metal. But today, fibre laser machines can step into the new waterjet industry and cut parts that previously could only be waterjet cut. Not only can our new 10kw lasers do that, but they also do it quicker and cheaper!
Zero Handling: sheet metal laser cutting
Zero handling has to be one of the greatest benefits of laser cutting with Laser 24! Our programming expertise combined with our new 10kW Bystronic laser and Bystronic ByTrans Extended means you can get a perfectly finished metal without any scraping or flake-off.
Simply put, we can put a full pack of sheets in our machine and sequence the machine to do the rest, making the most complicated jobs easy. We can even program the machine to use &#;part removal&#;. It will take the cut parts and place them on a pallet, remove the skeleton of the sheet, place a new sheet in the machine, and continue cutting until the job is done.
Automation also really benefits when parts are cut with a two-sided finish, creating perfectly finished metals. We can even cut metal that has plastic coating on both sides and the auto loader means the sheet enters and exits the machine without any scraping of the underside. It has always been tricky to cut finished metal, but we make it easy and can provide a quality second to none!
Metal Cut to Size: for all business sizes!
Laser 24 is proud to employ a long-serving team of laser cutting experts. They are key to the investments we have made to serve our customers. The service we offer goes that step further and every solution is tailored to our customers. We are all trained to work alongside our customers, listening to their individual needs, and using that technology to achieve what is required by adapting our services to suit their brief.
Larger engineering divisions working on contracts with a wider range of requirements can now look to have more of their needs met by Laser 24, such as those in the construction, marine, and medical industries. Our world-class machines operated by our world-class team mean we can provide parts that our competitors simply cannot. This includes a manner of all metal materials and thicknesses, including steel, copper, brass, and aluminium.
Metal laser cutting services
At Laser 24, we are at the frontier of providing our customers with the latest innovations in laser cutting solutions to ensure paramount performance at the quickest speed, no matter where they are located. Our expertise, coupled with our powerful machinery, enables us to produce high quality work with ultra-fast turnarounds at competitive prices. As we take the final steps to become ISO accredited later this year, we are putting these to full use.
The advantages of laser cutting are clear, enabling an economic and cost-effective solution that offers more precise cuts. Combined with Laser 24&#;s state-of-the-art equipment and advanced programming expertise, the possibilities for metal cutting and press braking are almost endless! With our dynamic approach tailored to your requirements, we can transform your project and generate unique results that make you a &#;cut&#; above the rest. It really is all in the details!
Our team can handle large batches and high-volume jobs with ease, so rest assured no project is too big for us. Whether it&#;s parts for equipment or a one-off cut for a new brand project, we can offer the advice and services to help make your dream project a reality and help you achieve the results you need.
The laser cutting process uses a tightly focused high-energy light/radiation laser beam to create rapid, high-temperature-gradient heating of a single, small-diameter spot. This triggers rapid melting/vaporization of the target material, allowing the spot to travel down through the material thickness rapidly and precisely.
The hot spot is blasted with gas, blowing away the melted/vaporized material. This process exposes the cut bottom to allow renewed melting and localized cooling, enabling the cut to proceed. For lighter and more reactive metals, the gas assist uses nitrogen to minimize oxidation. Alternatively, for steel, oxygen assistance accelerates the cut process by locally oxidizing material to assist in slag clearance and reduce the reattachment of melted/cut material.
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Laser cutting machines are built in a variety of formats. The most common type keeps the workpiece stationary while laser optics (mirrors) move in both the X and Y axes. Alternatively, a &#;fixed optic&#; format keeps the laser head stationary and the workpiece moves. A third option is a hybrid of the two previous methods. All methods execute 2D and 2.5D G-code patterns using a computer-controlled programming system to deliver fully automated, complex cutting paths. Figure 1 is an example of a laser cutting process:
Laser cutting advantages include: high precision, no material contamination, high speed, unlimited 2D complexity, a wide variety of materials, and a wide variety of applications and industries.
High Precision
The narrowness of the energy beam and the precision with which the material and/or the laser optics can be moved ensures extremely high cutting quality. Laser cutting allows the execution of intricate designs that can be cut at high feed rates, even in difficult or fragile material substrates.
No Material Contamination
Traditional rotary cutter processing of materials requires coolants to be applied. The coolant can contaminate the cut parts, which must then be de-greased. Grinding processes may also require coolant/lubricant to be applied. The ablation of the grinding wheel, a natural part of the process, leaves carbide granules that are a hazard in many products. Similarly, water cutting leaves garnet residues. Laser cutting involves only energy and gases and poses no risk of material contamination of the resulting parts.
High Speed
Few production methods can come close in processing speed to laser cutting. The ability to cut a 40 mm steel sheet using a 12 kW oxygen-assisted laser provides speeds some 10x faster than a bandsaw and 50&#;100 times faster than wire cutting.
Unlimited 2D Complexity
Laser cutting allows intricacy through the nature of the G-code movement control method of positioning and the small size of the applied energy hot spot. Features that are only weakly attached to the main body are cut without any application of force, so the process is essentially limited by material properties, rather than process capabilities.
Variety of Materials
Laser cutting is a flexible technology that can be adapted to cut widely different materials efficiently, including: acrylic and other polymers, stainless steel, mild steel, titanium, hastelloy, and tungsten. This versatility is increasing as technology develops. For example, dual frequency lasers can be applied to cut carbon fiber reinforced composites&#;one frequency for the fiber, one for the bonding agent.
Variety of Applications and Industries
Laser cutting finds application in many manufacturing industries because of the combination of versatility, high processing speeds, and precision. Sheet materials are key to production across most manufacturing industries. Applications of laser cutting across industries include: airframes, ships, medical implants, electronics, prototyping, and mass production.
Laser Cutting Disadvantages
Laser cutting disadvantages include: limitations on material thickness, harmful gases and fumes, high energy consumption, and upfront costs.
Limitation on Material Thickness
Most laser cutting machines sit in the <6 kW range. Their cut depth is limited to ~12 mm in metal thickness&#;and they accomplish that only slowly (~10 mm/s). It requires the largest and most powerful machines to reach the practical limits of cutting. However, similar limits apply to waterjet and wire erosion cutting. All three processes perform these deeper cuts faster than can otherwise be achieved.
Harmful Gases and Fumes
While many materials&#;particularly metals&#;do not produce harmful gases in the cutting process, many polymers and some metals do. For example, PTFE and various fluoropolymers produce phosgene gas (which is incompatible with human environments) when heated to high temperatures. These materials require controlled atmosphere processing.
High Energy Consumption
Laser cutting machines have a higher energy consumption rate than other cutting tools. A 3-axis CNC machine cutting out 40 mm steel plate blanks will consume around 1/10th of the power of a laser cutting machine extracting the same part. However, if the processing time is 1 minute on the laser cutter and 20 minutes on the CNC, the net power usage is 2:1 in favor of the laser cutter. Each part will have a different profile in this regard, but the differentials are rarely simple to analyze.
The alternatives to laser cutting are wire cutting, plasma cutting, waterjet cutting, and CNC machining.
Plasma Cutting
Plasma cutting is similar to electrical discharge machining (EDM) in that it erodes material by applying an arc to ablate the substrate. However, the arc is conducted from an electrode on a superheated gas plasma stream that directs the arc and blasts out the molten material from the cut. Plasma cutting and laser cutting are similar in that both are capable of cutting metal parts. Additionally, plasma cutting is suited to heavy materials and relatively coarse processing, for example, preparing heavy steel components for architectural and ship projects. It is a much less clean process and generally requires significant post-cut cleanup to make presentable parts, unlike laser cutting.
Waterjet Cutting
Waterjet cutting is typically a small machine process for the precise processing of a wide range of materials. The garnet abrasive employed is considerably harder than the majority of processed materials, but the hardest workpieces do pose a challenge for the process. Waterjet cannot match the processing speeds of laser cutting on thicker, hard substrates. In terms of similarities, both waterjet cutting and laser cutting produce high-quality cut parts, are suitable for working with many materials, and both processes have a small kerf (cut) width.
CNC Machining
CNC machining is considered one of the more traditional methods of extracting parts from flat material stock. It is similar to laser cutting in that both produce high-precision parts, are fast, reliable, and provide excellent repeatability. Compared to laser cutting, CNC requires more setup and more processing time. CNC also delivers lower throughput/capacity and requires greater manual intervention. However, results can be of similar quality, albeit at a generally higher cost. Rotating cutting tools apply considerable forces to the cut material and can result in more extensive local heating. The main advantages of CNC processing are the ability to accommodate complex 3D designs and to perform partial depth (rather than through) cuts.
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