To know the features and details about fiber laser cutting machine, let us first know what laser cutting is. To start with laser cutting, it is a technique which includes using a laser to cut materials. This technology is generally used for industrial manufacturing applications, but these days it is finding application in schools and small businesses too. Even some hobbyists are using this. This technology directs the output of a high-power laser through optics in most cases and that’s how it works. In order to direct the material or the generated laser beam, the Laser optics and CNC are used where CNC stands for computer numerical control. If you are going to use a typical commercial laser for cutting materials, it will involve a motion control system.
This motion follows a CNC or G-code of the pattern to be cut into the material. When the focused laser beam is directed at the material, it either melts, burns or blown away by a jet of gas. This phenomenon leaves an edge with a high-quality surface finishing. There are industrial laser cutters too which are used to cut flat-sheet material. They are also used to cut structural and piping materials.
There are many types of laser cutting machines based on their technology and functionalities. There are three main types of lasers used in laser cutting. They are:
CO2 laser
Water-jet guided laser
Fiber Lasers
Let’s now discuss fiber lasers. These lasers are a type of solid-state laser which is growing fast within the metal cutting industry. This technology uses a solid gain medium, which is contrary to CO2 lasers using a gas or liquid. In these lasers, the active gain medium is an optical fiber doped with rare-earth elements such as erbium, neodymium, praseodymium, holmium, ytterbium, dysprosium, and holmium. They all are related to doped fiber amplifiers which are meant to provide light amplification without lasing. The laser beam is produced by seed laser and is then amplified within a glass fiber. Fiber lasers provide wavelength up to 1.064 micrometers. Due to this wavelength, they produce an extremely small spot size. This spot size is up to 100 times smaller compared to the CO2. This feature of fiber lasers makes it ideal for cutting reflective metal material. This is one of the ways in which fiber lasers are more advantageous than CO2. Stimulated Raman scattering and four-wave mixing are some of the types of fiber nonlinearity which can provide gain and that’s why serve as gain media for a fiber laser.
Fiber laser cutting machines are widely used for various industrial applications. Following are the features of these machines which make these machines so popular.
Fiber lasers have higher wall-plug efficiency as compared to other laser cutting machines.
These machines give the advantage of maintenance-free operation.
These machines have the special feature of easy ‘plug and play ‘design.
Moreover, they are extremely compact and hence very easy to install.
Fiber lasers are known as the phenomenal BPP where BPP stands for beam parameter product. They also provide steady BPP over the whole power range.
These machines are known to possess high photon conversion efficiency.
There is higher flexibility of beam delivery in case of fiber lasers as compared to other laser cutting machines.
These machines allow the processing of highly reflective materials too.
They provide lower cost of ownership.
–For any further questions, welcome to contact John at johnzhang@ruijielaser.cc
Post time: Dec-20-2018