Details make the difference, especially when making precision cuts. Having a finished product that is polished and clean-looking is the end goal for manufacturers and they are finding the best way to attain that goal is through the use of a laser cutter. Laser cutting tools provide manufacturers the ability to produce parts more quickly with high levels of excellence.
Using a fiber laser in a cutting machine is a technology that is taking hold. A fiber laser is created of optical fibers that are “doped” with rare-earth elements. In the device the laser light beam is delivered to a cutting head that uses a different type of optical fiber. The technology doesn’t need to utilize mirrors or laser gases to deliver the laser to the cutting head. This is a benefit because in other styles of laser cutters maintenance of CO2 lasers is required.
Laser cutting technology, on the manufacturing shop floor, means more uptime, faster cutting speeds and cleaner cuts as compared to the older CO2 laser methods. Using the fiber laser machine the cut edges don’t have to be de-burred and can also be powder-coated easily. The fiber laser cutting machines are also easily programmable which saves time on the shop floor for those repetitive tasks that are part and parcel of any manufacturing process.
How do laser cutters work?
They focus high-powered lasers onto the material to be cut. The beam is focused down to a slim point that can be as small as one one-thousandth of an inch. The laser can burn, melt or even vaporize the material it is focused upon. The type of material that can be cut depends on the laser’s strength and can be calibrated to cut any item from acrylic, to paper to hardboard to one-inch thick stainless steel.
The laser is controlled through the creation of a vector file that is sent to the laser cutter. Machinists can easily program the type and style of cut through the use of various illustrator programs and send it to the machine.
Laser cutters are not new technology, but they have become more affordable and are used on more shop floors now than at any time in the past.
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