How to find the right laser cutting machine
For most fabricators, it is a significant decision to purchase a industrial laser cutter. Fiber laser is the laser source of the laser cutter, which will focus on the work area and cut the material. It matters to the initial capital that you inject and the impact on your entire fabricating process. If the wrong machinery is chosen, you have to live with the decision for a quite long time. This type of equipment expenditure is a vast amount, so fabricators should know how to find the right fit.
Do you know how to pick a one that fits you? Even if you own one currently, when did you buy it and what affect did it make?
This guide will help you in making a correct purchase decision that drive your fabricating operations to new heights.
If your company subcontract the work to other factories, or you are have flexibility with the lead times, then you don’t really need to invest in a laser cutter. Meanwhile, this scenario doesn’t involve much risk. But if you pay a lot in laser-cut parts, you may consider to bring a fiber laser cutter in-house. In the words of Henry Ford, “If you need a machine and don’t buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don’t have it.”
For many reasons, invest in different automation systems may make senses for the company. It can help us to reduce the risk of our purchasing option because we can investigate and analyse which one can suffice our requirement.
If you decide to purchase a laser cutter, then question comes, How to choose the right laser cutter? You can make your choice after considering the following points.
1. What is the difference between the laser technology of CO2 laser and a fiber laser cutter?
Two types of lasers currently make up a majority of the industrial market: traditional CO2 gas laser and newer fiber lasers. CO2 lasers have been dominated the market for a long time, it use a gas-filled resonator to get the electricity and use mirrors to deliver the beam. But fiber laesr uses a fiber laser generator as light source to cut materials. Early on the fiber technology could cut at these higher speeds only on thin materials, but with the advent of more powerful lasers, fiber lasers are demonstrating robust cutting speeds even in 0.5-in.-thick material. As a result, fiber lasers tend to be a popular choice, despite their higher price. Even though it appeared for the first time in 2008, more and more fabricators choose to purchaser fiber laesr cutting machine for its high efficiency and lower operational cost.Also fiber technology can cut reflective material, such as copper and brass , whereas it is difficult for CO2 lasers. But for some thicker and speciaized materials , the applications may more suitable for a CO2 laser. Also, some manufacturers may feel comfortable with CO2 technology because they’ve used it for several years, and the company has in-house maintenance expertise.
2. Service life and equipment maintenance of laser cutter:
After the warantty time, you have to consider one more factor, ongoing maintanence. Will you depend on the service of the original equipment manufacturers or the services which provided by a third-party? Unlike a CO2 lasers, fiber laser has less movable parts or mirrors, so it requires less ongoing maintenance during its lifetime. Fiber laser beams are produced via optic cabling. They don’t require optical mirrors, an expensive overhead cost, and its focusing lens is unexposed. As a result, the focusing lens could last a lifetime, if properly maintained, compared to other lasers. Additionally, fiber lasers have less moving parts compared to other laser forms, which utilize a rapidly moving mirror in order to increase the laser’s intensity. Without mirrors, cutting speed is boosted and maintenance is minimal. To cut a straight line of 1mm in thickness, a fiber laser can cut three times faster than a traditional laser. This includes cutting through materials such as stainless steel.Although the cost of later use of fiber laser cutters is low, this does not mean that maintenance is not required during its operation.
Since there is a lot of dust produced during metal cutting, it is necessary to strengthen the dust treatment to ensure that the internal components of the machine are not stained and the equipment is running effectively. In addition, attention must be paid to the lubrication of the machine and the lubrication of racks such as rail frames, in order to increase the speed of the machine.
3. Material handling.
It is also a significant factor to take into account, because the cutting speed of the laser cutting machines are increasing nowadays, that makes it important for you to know how you will arrange your manufacturing schedure. How many working shifts of the laser machine do you plan everyday? can your operator keep up with manually loading and unloading the laser, even if it has a second shuttle table? Minimizing the labor cost can help you remain competitive in the business. Sometimes the steel fabricators may choose not to purchse the material handling automation immediately. If you choose this route, ensure that pallet systems or even an automated storage and retrieval tower can be added easily in the future.
4. New software provided by the fiber laser cutting machine supplier
● In many instances, fabricators have software package that they are used to use. Can the oringinal software work efficiently with the new machine, or you need to purchase a new software? What can the new software brings to you? Can the new software package work with your machine? That is vital for you to know about the capabilities of different software so as to decide if is necessary to buy a new software.● With the cost of about 1 percent of the equipment price, monitoring software can provide a 10 to 50 percent productivity gain with paybacks of less than four months. Therefore, there is one more element that you need to consider, Can the new software package moniitor the overall operational process and measure its performance in real time？
5. Cutting laser technology of laser cutting machine
What cutting technology will you need? According to your fabrication, choose the cutting technology that can help you to maximize your production. Then consult your potential supplier and ask them to give you some advice about which type of machine can make you remain competitive. Following are some common cutting technology:● Leapfrog Cutting
The new leapfrog function based on CNC eliminates the disadvantage of “rectangular” motion or false leapfrog of the cutting head.
Adopting the motion of a parabola, with jumping and falling based on CNC to achieve real-time control and with accurate and rapid positioning, thus significantly improves the efficiency of processing, can be applied in sheet metal laser cutting.
● Automatic Obstacle Avoidance
When a workpiece cocks, the cutting head can identify it automatically and rise rapidly to avoid the obstacle and locate the position of the next workpiece intelligently
- To reduce the probability of collision between the cutting head and the workpiece;
- To guarantee the consistency of cutting during processing, thus improves the efficiency of processing;
- To locate the position of the next workpiece intelligently, thus reduces the probability of integral transfer of a sheet and reduces the waste of sheets;
- To reduce the workload of the operator and editor through the simple and intelligent operation.
● Lightning Cutting
Hymson’s characteristic new technology, which improves the laser cutting production in three aspects, i.e. cutting precision, cutting speed and energy consumption in cutting
High Efficiency: Lightning cutting has more efficient capability of perforation and faster cutting speed.
Low Energy Consumption: The energy consumption of gas for cutting purposes is reduced by over 50%
Good Quality: Higher quality of cutting section, smooth and even cut edge, fewer burrs.
● Rapid Perforation
Hymson’s characteristic new technology, which reduces the time of perforation and optimizes the whole process of perforation to achieve stable, fast, high quality perforation
High Speed: To penetrate various sheets of medium thickness consistently and quickly within 200ms
High Efficiency: To save time by over 80% as compared to the time of general perforation of 1-2 seconds
High Quality: The perforation process is stable, without blasting. The technology is safe and efficient.
Easy to Operate: Simple and intelligent, reducing the workload of the operator and editor.
● Breakpoint Resume
In case of program interruption, sudden power failure, etc. during cutting, when you restart the machine, the “Breakpoint Resume” function can memorize the path previously set and resume the processing.
Avoid going through the process again from the original start point which is time-consuming and affects the efficiency
When cutting a thick sheet or a workpiece with a broad outline, the “Breakpoint Resume” function can well solve a series of problems, such as time-consuming, consumption of a lot of materials, high cost, etc.
● Arbitrary Point Cut-in
During the real production, when a part of the sheet is not cut thoroughly due to dust on a certain node on the sheet, insufficient gas, etc., the solution for general laser cutting machine manufacturers is resetting the system interface, that is, going through the process again from the start to the end of the procedure operation which is time-consuming, consuming a lot of materials, and high-cost.
With Hymson’s “Arbitrary Point Cut-in” function, the cutting head can cut in at arbitrary point, without cutting from the start to the end, thus solves the problems of time-consuming, consumption of a lot of materials, high cost, etc.
● Gradual Speed Regulation in Tool Start
A thick sheet is not cut thoroughly; lines on the section are uneven; the section has serious dross, etc. If the tool start is poor, high quality cutting effect of thick sheets cannot be obtained and a series of problems that impact the workpiece quality, such as reflection of blue light, fault, etc., may appear. In serious cases, the cutting head and optical devices may be damaged.
With Hymson’s “Gradual Speed Regulation in Tool Start” (for thick sheets) process, after perforation, the speed regulation is gradual intelligently, thus achieves better cutting effect. This process is mainly used in cutting of thick stainless steel and aluminum alloy sheets, and is stable and provides high quality workpieces.
● Aluminum Alloy Burr-free Cutting (Optional)
Burrs are easy to appear in aluminum alloy cutting, so additional manual or mechanical polishing is needed, which increases product production processes, thus reduces the productivity, extends the shipment cycle, and increases the production cost.
Hymson’s “Aluminum Alloy Burr-free Cutting” process realizes no burrs, no wrinkles, high precision, no mold consumption, no need for repairing molds, saving of time of mold replacement, saving of processing fee, reduction of product cost, etc.
● Fly-cutting
The “Fly-cutting” process can put the start point of cutting of the outline on the tangent line of the motion trail of the laser head, without adopting leads. It does not independently cut every detail, instead, it cut all outlines into a straight line.
It reduces the changes in the cutting direction of the laser during cutting, reduces the duration and the number of times of perforation, and ensures that the laser head is always in the high-velocity motion status during cutting, so it is very suitable for high speed cutting processing of thin steel sheets.
It reduces the processing time of sheets and improves the cutting efficiency of the lathe.
● High Speed Cutting
General rapid acceleration and deceleration, such as violent impact vibration, toothed rack break-off, etc., may damage the hardware of the lathe.
Hymson’s “High Speed Cutting” function plans the cutting path in advance and optimizes the turning and the addition and subtraction process as well as the interpolation.
Efficient: Significantly improving the acceleration and deceleration and reducing the time of acceleration and deceleration; increasing the efficiency of complicated workpiece processing by 30%
Safe: Absorbing the shocks from acceleration and deceleration in cutting on the lathe to guarantee high speed processing of the machine and to protect the lathe against shocks.
All of the below cutting technologies can be provided by Hymson lasers. For more information of Hymson laser-fiber laser cutting machine supplier, please click here: cnc fiber laser cutting machine manufacturers - Hymson (hymsonlaser.net). We can provide cnc metal sheet cutting machine, fibre laser tube cutting machine, fiber laser welding machine.
6.How Will We Finance the Purchase?
While some manufacturers pay cash for a laser, the majority use some methods to finance the purchase. Don’t assume that your bank is the best source for funding the laser equipment purchase. Look at other alternatives, such as the OEM, many of which own their own financing arms.After thinking about the below factors and obtaining the quotes based on the feedback, the selection of the supplier of a laser cutting machine can be used to narrow down to two to three sources. From there you need to find the right model, ask the right questions during equipment demonstrations, and work toward an acceptable price. Remember, there are many important items to discuss during the final negotiation.
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