Other Important Capacities
- Maximum Part Size - 3000x1500mm
- Maximum Part Weight - Around 800kgs
- Minimum Part Size - Very small, but it depends on the material and the thickness - please ask us
- Thinnest We Can Cut - We've cut metallic foils, paper, shim - please ask us
- Monthly Machine Capacity - We can process around 1200 hours of cutting per month
- Fabricating Capacity - We specialise in laser cutting. However we have clients we use for various secondary operations including folding, welding, painting and polishing if you require it
- Patience - Limitless...
About Laser Cutting
It may be useful to understand a little more about the laser cutting process, its benefits, and some of the limitations.
Laser cutting is a technology that has been used in industry since the 1970's. The first common application was for sign-making, mainly cutting acrylic. Since then the process has been adopted and adapted by virtually every industry group, and is now a significant process in every manufacturing economy.
The reasons for laser cutting popularity include:
- The accuracy of the cut part achievable
- The repeatiblity and consistency of the process
- The level of detail achievable
- The range of materials which can be processed
- The speed of the process
- The cost of parts
- The ease of changing parts (particularly when compared to hard tooling etc)
- The lack of physical contact during the process
- The small heat affected zone
Laser cutting works by melting, burning or vapourising the material, while an assist gas is employed to "clear" the cut zone of the molten / burnt material or the gas vapour. In the early days of laser cutting the setting of the laser to produce the desired effect was very much a manual process and very complex. The latest machines now come with many of the common parameters pre-programmed, allowing much easier setting. However, the variations in batches of material lead to serious issues in cut quality, and operators still require many hours of training to run a laser efficiently and economically.
Lasers are still complex
machines to operate
Industrial laser cutting machines are predominantly used to cut parts from flat-sheet material. However, there are machines specially adapted to cut tubular components, and multi-axis lasers used to cut pre-formed components.
The cutting process is very complex, but basically involves pre-piercing the material outside the area of desired cut, moving the laserbeam into the cutting area to apply heat, and finally use an assist gas to remove the heated material and produce the cut. The type of assist gas employed is critical, and is dependant on the material to be laser cut; most commonly used are Oxygen (used predominantly for carbon steels), Nitrogen (used for non-ferrous steels & non-metals) and Argon (used for more exotic materials such as titanium).
The cut-edge quality achievable with laser cutting depends on the type of material and the thickness. As the thickness increases the striations on the cut-edge become more prominent. Striations are lines on the cut-edge where the molten zone meets the cool zone
The above images show the difference in striations between a piece of 10mm (top) and 20mm (bottom) mild steel. As can be seen the 20mm part has more pronounced "ridges" (the striations).
These striations affect the tolerance achievable. For example, in 2mm mild steel we would offer +/-0.1mm accuracy. In 10mm steel the repeatable tolerance would increase to +/-0.2mm, and at 20mm we would be maintaining +/-0.4mm.
Other limitations of laser cutting include the maximum thickness we're able to cut (see the chart above), the amount of detail achievable (it depends on the thickness and material type - please ask us), and the types of materials (particularly some plastics) we are unable to cut due to health & safety issues.
Actually, here at Cutting Technologies we believe the most important part of laser cutting is the attitude of the people who do it. So leave the technology to us, and ask us what we can do...