[Klox]

What's the cutting capabilities of laser cutting? Types of material, max thickness, start holes size (if it is needed etc.)

Klox

[Laff Riot]

http://www.torchmate.com/cuts.htm

I know several ppl that run laser - I have been looking into them for engraving use. If you can give me some material types and thicknesses I can ask them.

IMO for just cutting - waterjet. for incredible defintion - laser.

[Klox]

Lets say copper, brass, aluminium, stainless steel & HSS.
The max thickness they are (willing?) capable to cut, as i understand you sometimes gets blowback of molten metal and it causes damage to the "nozzles" (not the correct term). What type of accuracy can be cut, 0.05mm / 0.1mm / 0.2mm tolerances?

Klox :wee:

[balsaman]

That can happen but they have presurized cutting heads and most are presurized with pure oxygen for cutting assist. Also they have cheap cover slides to protect the expensive optic's. You change the cover slides periodically.

Where I work we have 2000 watt lasers for cutting steel up to around 3/16" thick at high speeds (I am not sure how past, but I am guessing 200 feet/minute?

The heads are autofocusing (stay .030 away from the material regardless or material shape) and are mounted to robots. They are amazing to watch (thru laser safe glass).

Did you know that double edged rasor blades are cut out by laser?

Eric

[hardmill]

Our laser guy at work says he can cut 1." thk mild steel.

Watch your eyes

[Klox]

Thanx for the info guys!

Next question: What surface finish can one expect with laser cutting?

Next, next question: What metalurgical changes can one expect with laser cutting?

:violin: :banana: :cheers:

[balsaman]

The edge lookes like its flame cut but it's much finer. It's a very nice finish, but not as nice as a machined finish. Generally if you're cutting a hole, you wold burn through and lead in to the cut. I think it can harden some types of steel on the edges. I am no metalergist.

Eric

[Klox]

Thanx,
There is a company a throw stone away from me doing laser cutting. They always make out laser cutting as "humbo mumbo hush, hush, top secret". Now i know beter. I know on volume cutting it is much faster than edm, but not as accurate.....

Klox

[paulried]

Ah the old "mumbo jumbo"!

My company has two lasers (mostly used for cutting wood but we do some steel) and we got into the business in this area to dispell the mystery of the machine. They are very easy to operate and maintain. Now 15 years ago it was a different matter, but now it is more like running a cnc router.

If you want to avoid changes in your material, check out waterjet cutting. The new FLOW systems are very accurate and do not affect the surrounding material. Slower than lasers though, but much faster than EDM

[HuFlungDung]

So tell me Paul, does laser cutting a piece of wood leave a line of fire?
Do you have to wet it down first or what?

[balsaman]

It just quetly cuts along. There is a faint glow where the cutting is happening. No fire. It does a beautiful job. Very nice finish, but darkened...

[paulried]

Balsaman....you need to inject a shield of inert gas parallel with the beam during cutting and you will get a nice golden yellow color rather than black (unless you are cutting sappy wood)!

Wood cuts like cheese. If you keep the beam moving quickly enough, no fires! Took some learning.

[viperdm100]

wow this sounds interesting. what kind of cuttung can be done / finish expected on aluminum ,can lettering be done with a nice finish? If so what would the start up costs be for a machine like this?

[balsaman]

The two 2000 watt lasers we have at our factory were in the area of $400,000 each.

Ouch

A 50-100 watt laser for wood can be had for $10,000 used.

Eric

[cadcoke3]

Just to add some fuel to the laser fire, here are some links I've collected about this topic;

A good collection of laser links;
http://technology.niagarac.on.ca/peo...LaserLinks.htm

Home-brew laser site;
http://spt06.chez.tiscali.fr/00/lasers.htm

A home-made CO2 Laser;
http://www.altair.org/CO2laser.htm

This guy made his own CNC and also a laser, (but doesn't seem to use them together);
http://www.nilno.com

A chart showing PRICES for MANY CO2 LASERS!
http://nilno.com/laser_dir/laser_prices.html

This is the cheapest source for sealed CO2 lasers (no continuous flow of gas, like most of the other low-cost ones) They also sell a kit to adapt a gantry CNC to laser cutting. A 20 Watt laser is around $1,100 and 80 Watt is around $2,900 (last time I checked)
http://www.emissiontechnologies.com/

Joe Dunfee

[laserboy122]

So tell me Paul, does laser cutting a piece of wood leave a line of fire?
Do you have to wet it down first or what?

If you use a air assist it only vaporizes the material... Clean out the scrap good though
don't wet it down unless you want it to warp.

[owhite]

Just to add some fuel to the laser fire, here are some links I've collected about this topic....

This guy made his own CNC and also a laser, (but doesn't seem to use them together);
http://www.nilno.com....

hey hey, I do use the cnc plus laser. Its just not easy to find from my top level site.

Go here to laser plus cnc cutting.

http://www.nilno.com/laser_intro/

owen

[elmor fudd]

I used to work for a laser cutting company over here in the uk and the laser i used most was a LASERLAB rated at 1800watts.

I found that i could cut 15 to 20mm mild with ease on this machine but at very low speeds.

Aluminium up to 6mm, brass up to 3mm and we only cut copper up to 1.6mm because of the beam getting reflected back in to the mirrors.
Plastic,wood and cradboard i could also get up to 50mm i also knew that it would do more but these where the only sizes we where asked to cut.
When cutting stainless,brass,copper,ali and inconell then the power setting was always on maximum and we used nitrogen to clean cut.
The bigger 4000watt lasers we had could cut up to 35mm mild, 15mm stainless ect.

With regards to hole sizes then i found that you could quite easily hold 0.1mm on any hole and we cut holes as small as 2mm.
With thicker material you tend to get a taperd hole.
With regards to speed then we could get 3.4meters a minute on 3mm mild and around 2 meters a minute on 5mm plate.
with the bigger 4000watt machine we could get as much as 6 meters a minute on 3mm mild.

To get optimum performance out of a laser then everything has to fall in place i.e new lense, quality of steel,clean mirrors,correct focal point and beam smack in centre of nozzel plus a few other things like lady look...lol

Just remember that buying the best quality steel in the world doesnt mean you will get a perfect cut or a good cutting speed.

I learnt that some of the crappy steels actualy cut better than the best

[rpage]

Met a guy last week who is a self employeed machinest. He programmed a laser table at his last job. They ran a 4000 watt table that cost (according to him) 3/4 of a million USD. He was telling me speeds and such... was amazing. And the 3/4 of a million really does not sound that bad when you consider what it is capable of cutting. Pretty amazing stuff. Would love to see one with that kind of power cutting.

[KTP]

Hmmm, but if you made a pure profit of $120/hr on that machine, and could run it constantly 8 hours a day for 2 years, you would still not have paid it off!