Nowadays, material cutting is the largest subdivision of laser application in China, and most of them are medium and high power material cutting. These materials include stainless steel, carbon steel, copper, aluminum and other daily main metals, and carbon steel and stainless steel account for the largest proportion.

With the rapid development of the laser industry, the localization of laser is also in full swing. From YAG laser, CO₂ laser to fiber laser, from 500 watts to 20000 watts, laser technology and products have become more and more perfect and mature in only more than ten years.

Special shaped material cutting came into being

In various applications of laser, laser cutting uses high-power laser beam to scan the material surface, heat it to tens of thousands of degrees Celsius in a very short time, melt or gasify the material, and then blow the melted or gasified material away from the cutting seam with high-pressure gas to achieve the purpose of cutting the material.

Initially, laser cutting machines can only cut flat plates. With the plane cutting entering the era of small profits, many enterprises are constantly studying new application scenarios, and special-shaped material cutting (including tube cutting) came into being.

Special shaped tube fittings cannot be clamped and fed by general tube cutting machine. Some customers will use machine tools to process these non-standard tube fittings, which is too inefficient. Some customers will cut holes with standard tubes before bending, which will deform the holes.

How to cut special-shaped materials

There are usually the following solutions for cutting special-shaped materials:

1. Three dimensional laser cutting machine + 7-axis displacement robot (7-axis linkage cutting): suitable for customers with multiple varieties and medium batches, with the advantages of small investment, quick effect and convenient adjustment;

2. High precision laser cutting machine + displacement robot (6-axis linkage cutting): it has the advantages of high precision (repetition accuracy ± 0.05mm) and fast speed, but the equipment cost is high, which is suitable for customers who require very high tube cutting accuracy;

3. Special laser tube cutting machine: in addition to standard products, special machines and supporting fixtures can also be developed according to customer tube fitting products. Fast cutting speed and high precision, suitable for customers with very large tube cutting volume and high requirements.

What are the advantages of laser cutting

1. High cutting accuracy, high dimensional accuracy, flat and clean incision, no burr, and little material loss;

2. The heat affected zone is very small, with almost no thermal deformation and no oxidation, which can produce high-quality and more consistent parts, especially conducive to subsequent automatic welding;

3. High cutting efficiency and mass production. All operations of laser cutting can be unified into the same unit as a continuous operation process, which greatly reduces the logistics time. The length of standard tube is 6 meters. The traditional processing method requires very heavy clamping, while the clamping and positioning of laser processing is simple, which makes batch processing possible;

4. The laser cutting machine adopts numerical control system to ensure accuracy and flexibility. Laser tube cutting technology can realize cutting of various shapes in any direction through programming. The template shape can be changed quickly without any tool help. End users can also control the production of short version or medium version without manufacturing a large number of templates, which makes it possible to realize personalized customization.