Steel Cutting » laser

Metal laser cutting

admin — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:47:34 +0000

The metal laser cutting finds very wide application range in many industries where metal elements are required. Construction, automotive, machinery industries, medical equipment, artistic creations that’s only a few of areas where the unity of precision and power is necessary to achieve the goal. Uncertainty and not exact results of produced parts in yet used steel cutting methods is the main reason for looking around to find a better ways of cutting. Not accurate production affects not only time and effort to get final and best fitting parts of the machines or constructions, but also consumes the budget and creates more complaints from the recipients of service or product customers. Laser steel cutting allows for flexible production stratedy starting from short product lines to big industrial scale projects. It can be very efficient in designing and testing phase with easy and precise adjuting any detail parameters. Precision laser cutting with ready-to-use products, without necessity for any further polishing of produced parts, removes another place to let the errors get into. Metal laser cutting reduces unpredictability factor also with the full automation of the process and the computer analysis software reduces efficiency of used steel. The current laser cutting technology encorages the engeneers to create even more sophisticated and serviceable projects and discover fresh ways for steel application in brand new products.

Cutting Steel with Laser

admin — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 11:45:35 +0000

General idea of laser steel cutting works by forced amplification of light emmision. Laser machining operates by highly concentrated and amplified light beam. Condensation of power is between 10^8 and 10^14 W/m2 on surface. Next, the enegry of photons within a laser beam is converted into very hot heat which burns or melts down and evaporates machined material (steel sheets for example). Laser machining usually utilises gas lasers (carbon dioxide lasers CO2). With laser cutting we can distinguish some special features like: cutting without direct contact of header with cutted surface; no horizontal force is needed to move through cutted material (but we need precise speed regulation to archieve proper results instead); high speed of laser cutting process with narrow area affected by generated heat (reduced tension and deformations); high precision with level around 10^-3 mm order of magnitude; quiet and smooth running process; full automation; not loosing cutting parameters caused by hardware wearing mechanical contact with steel.
Energy of the laser beam is deployed to cut flat steel blocks and steel sheets placed in 3D space using holders, for drilling holes in hard materials with high accuracy and precision, welding or melting materials and many more practical usages. Cutting flat steel shets by numerically controlled laser machines (CNC) gives quick cutting speed with repeatable and high quality features of manufactured products.

Steel Cutting by Fiber Laser

admin — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 11:54:35 +0000

Let’s take a quick glance on a high power fiber laser during work (not gas lasers). Complex and smooth shapes like this fancy butterfly are cutted in 2mm stainless steel like picture printet od sheet of paper. Extreme precision conjuncts here with fast velocity of cutting and decides on quality of final product and new designs possibilities.

Movie features: Brahmastra Laser Cutting System.

Some of the main features of fiber based laser cutters:

Perfect Beam Parameter Product (BPP)
Constant BPP Over Entire Power Range
Estimated Diode Lifetime over 100000 hours
Small Focus Over Large Working Distance
Over 25% Wall-Plug Efficiency
Very Compang and Easy to install
Integrated Coupler or Beam Switch
Modular “Plug&Play” Design
Maintenance Free Operation

Laser ablation

admin — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 18:35:07 +0000

The research on operative usage of high energy laser beam interaction with solid state materials are conducted since the begining of laser science and construction of first laser emmiters. Since early sixties (Nobel prize for laser discovery was given to C.H Townes, N.G. Basov and A.M. Prochorov in 1964.) highenergy lasers was used to evaporate material from solid substances used eventually to chemical analysis. Impulse lasers can be focused on the surface of material in range of a few milimeters which can obtain surface density 1012 W per square centimeter. This high intensity energy interacts with variuos solid steel materials, changing photons energy into energy of electrons, thermal and mechanical on the surface of a sampled fabric. In the result we get an evaporization (ablation) and removal of remaining stuff as neutral atoms and molecules with negative and positive charged ions comming from areas of surface affected with laser light.
Besides technical details we find laser ablation very useful, especially in the industry implementations. Ablation can be used as a tool for welding, drilling holes, cutting steel sheets, producing very thin shells and micro shapes, for micro- and bio-elements analysis of solid materials, laser plastic surgery. Pulse solid state lasers appeared to be extraordinarily productive in laser ablation. They can work on single (Q-switched) or continous (free running) mode reaching 500 mJ energy of wisp. Main difference between those two working modes is a laser pulse lenght time. In the first case we count only a few nanoseconds while the second one stays for around 150 milliseconds. This implies miscellaneous results, different punctures on surface of material or sample, plasma occurence or ionised molecules emmission and also the their ionisation level etc. As we see, laser ablation is the crucial moment in steel cutting by laser beams.

Laser Cutting Basics

admin — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:35:31 +0000

Laser cutting of steel sheets can be applied to differend kinds of material like: rustless steel, acid-resisting steel and aluminum. Actually, cutting by laser is not limited to stell only – also wood and synthetic can be processed. The most important advance of cutting by laser is the highest quality of the final elements and ultimate precision of developed elements. They usually need no further processing and in most cases are ready to use right after taking out of the machine. And this si the crucial moment when it comes to setting the price.

Automated process of optimise cutting way can save the material in the way no other method can stand with. Average quality of edge cutted by the laser is very smooth and the accuracy is keep at 0,01 parts of the milimeter). Thanks to the computer driven laser beam patch the waste can be pressed to the minimum. Movements of the laser beam during the process are quick, which means very quick delivery time but also minimizes the termical influence on the material so it preserves natural steels features as much possible.