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

Klox

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.

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:

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

Our laser guy at work says he can cut 1." thk mild steel.
:cool: :cool:
Watch your eyes:p

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:

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

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

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

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?

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...

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. :D

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?

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

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/people/mcsele/lasers/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

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 :o
don't wet it down unless you want it to warp.

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

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

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.

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!

We had 3 large 4000 watt lasers which cost around £350,000 each (around $600,000) and we charged £150 an hour plus the customer paid for the entire sheet of steel even if they only needed half and the rest was used for other jobs and paid for by the new customer.
We ran these lasers for 24hrs 6 days a week making around £70,000 a week for us.
We also had 2 1700watt lasers making £120 an hour and 1 2000watt water asist laser making the same amount an hour.

Total per week £119840 plus the profit of the steel from the next customer.

Running these for 51 weeks a year on 2 12 hour shifts with 5 men to control and load plus 1 forktruck driver who deliverd the steel to the machines when needed.

Giving a grand total of £6,111,840 (around $11,000,000) a year income plus what ever income the profile machine and milling and turning made over the year aswell.

We only employed 30 people at the time aswell.

Wow, but just think if you had bought 50 4000 watt lasers for 600,000 each you could make 24hours x 6 days x 50 x $257/hr = $1,850,400 per week!

That is $96,220,800 a year! :)

You guys missed out on some serious money! (chair)

Gentlemen,
Ahh.. A pipe dream. I am the Foreman of a Laser cutting shop. We have 1- 3 axis 4000 watt laser and 2- 3000 watt five axis Lasers. The 3 axis makes around $125.00 an hour but... costs about $90 per hour to run. So in reality you make about $35 per hour profit on a good day. And yes initial investment is around $750,000.00 for a quality machine.

Ha ha....your in america mate and im in the UK.
Out of £150 an hor we made £123 profit and for breakdowns we bought insurance and extended warrenty so if they broke down then it got repaired free with parts and labour thrown in.
They didnt break down very often. :)

See in the UK electricity, rent, and consumables like laser gas, etc. are free....us blokes in the states have to pay for all that nonsense.

I should move across the ocean...

gas and electricity donr cost a lot and when your consumables last a lot longer when treat correct. yes maybe you should move over.
4000 watts = 4kw.......4kw hr = 48p +gas at around £1.50 an hour and nozzels and lenses get change about once a week and then nozzels are reclaimed.
America has got a high pay rate for workers and we only got £6.50 an hour ($11.40)

Elmor,
How does your insurance work over there? We have to pay a deductable of about $5,000.00. We also have the incurred cost of paying for that insurance. If you have the extended warranty I would assume that you are still making payments on the machine also? Is that taken away from the 150 an hour? How much do they pay operator's there? What about building expenses? I believe that you make a good amount of profit but I think your number's are exagerated. I have a couple friends in the laser service buisness that came from the UK and they have said in the past that profit margins on Lasers there are about double what we get here. That would mean that you guys make somewhere around 70 an hour for a low number? Look I don't want to start an argument but I'm just wondering what is taken out of your hourly rate for operating? Is it just the quoted price of the part X how many parts you made in an hour = profit?

Dang, you guys even have better technology than us blokes.

In the states, CO2 lasers run at a maximum of 20% efficiency from electricity to optical power out. That means the 4000 watt laser consumes around 20,000 watts of electrical energy. This is not even taking to account the vacuum pumps, blowers, chillers, etc.

Forget my last post...sell your 100% efficient CO2 lasers to us for $$$$ and forget cutting steel! :)

But seriously...$11.40 an hour labor? And you have to PAY to watch broadcast TV....hmm, I think I will stay on this side of the pond...

The machines are already paid for mate.
They earnt there money back in 3 years.
The buildings bought and paid for but we still have to pay rates ect.
With regards to the servicing then we take out 5 year service warrentys for around £5k a year.
When it boils down to it the lasers are the backbone of the company but we offer a one stop facility right from the drawing coming in to the finished product going out.
Lasers, milling, turning, drilling and taping, press brakes, welding and fabrication, surface grinding, puching, guiloteaning ect
If youve ever watched the WORLDS STRONGEST MAN contest then you will have seen all the equipment made from steel.
We made all of it and most of it on the lasers including the holes in the box section.( when i say we i mean myself and 4 more blokes)
If you buy your steel in bulk you get big discounts so you can then charge more for the steel but still make it cheaper for the customer to have the parts laser cut.
Some jobs where charged per item and others by the hour.
One offs for example where charged per item plus program fees of £50.
I remember 1 job we had where one offs and they took about 12 mins each and where charged at £48 each plus £50 one time program fee and i spent around 71/2 hrs doing these so it made around £490 an hour.

$11.40 an hour..........tell me about it.
Last job i did was self employed and got £25.00 an hour ($44 hr).
Been looking at jobs in the states myself for a few weeks and it seems that $65000 a year is about average over there. Thats a top wage that is.
wouldnt mind moving over but dont think i could work in inches after spending years working in MM's..........lol