5 Advantages of Using Laser Cutting Method

If you belong to the manufacturing industry, you probably might have thought about using a laser cutting method for your next project. But the doubt clouding on your head would be, 'how to trust any other process than the traditional one?' To answer that, I have mentioned some of the advantages of using laser cutting methods. This will help you know how this method saves your time, money, decreases your labor work, and gives versatility, productivity, and precise cutting. The accuracy of the laser cutting method also depends on the parts you use for it. So, always opt for quality laser parts like Mazak laser parts. This will improve your output's precision and the shelf life of the machine.

 

1. Provides High Accuracy and Precise Cutting

 

The laser cutting machine includes a small, powerful laser that provides a focused light beam on the material. This way, the machine can cut the material precisely. This laser usually possesses a tolerance of 0.003 mm to 0.006 mm. And a plasma cutter possesses a typical tolerance of about 0.02 mm. Some die-cutting tools may have tolerance power as high as 1-3 millimeters or even more. The powerful laser melts material with impeccable accuracy.

 

2. Versatile at Cutting

 

You can use laser cutting for various tasks like cutting complex shapes and on different types of materials including metals like copper, stainless steel, brass, wood, aluminum, plastic, and on various types of textiles. Laser cutters are also useful for engraving, drilling, and marking. The versatility of laser cutting machines makes it an essential part of modern machining.

 

3. Handles Complex Cuttings

 

You can use a laser cutting method to work on highly narrow sections of any material. For example, if you want various complex geometries on a material, then laser cutting will provide precise outputs rather than traditional methods. The result of cutting with this method is nothing but precision. It causes zero distortion or warping to the cut area.

 

4. Benefits Economically

 

One of the significant benefits of a laser cutting method is that it is economical to use. Traditional cutting methods require dyes, punches, and other things custom-made, particularly for individual orders, but that is not the case with laser cutting. 

 

Whether you use this technique for daily project works or limited-run projects, this technology will prove to be economically friendly in any scale of work. How? Laser cutters do not use any specific type of tooling. For example, you do not have to custom-prepare individual dyes for different shapes or projects.  

You just need to have a material, a laser cutter, and a schematic design to load into the computer. This way, you can save costs for small-batch projects.

 

Plus, laser machine tools have fewer mechanical moving parts. Thus, you do not have to pay high maintenance costs or harbor much effort in operating it. For that, it’s essential that you use quality parts like Mazak laser parts or mazak replacement parts to benefit from all the advantages of laser cutting machines.

 

5. Less Sheet Waste

 

The laser cutting method uses the highest amount of your sheet material. The laser cutter maximizes the number of usable parts and components from the sheet material by a process called nesting. This results in less wastage of materials and more output from a single sheet. Additionally, it saves time by exchanging new sheets more quickly than the traditional method. 

Wrapping it Up

I hope this article helped you to know how laser cutting can be advantageous for your business and why the majority of businesses have already started using it. It provides unparalleled precision accuracy, saves cost, and reduces raw material wastage. You can avail all these benefits only if you invest in quality parts like Mazak laser parts. You can get these parts online and in near by market too.

Source: https://altpartsinc.wixsite.com/altpartsinc/single-post/5-advantages-of-using-laser-cutting-method 

Benefits of Laser Machines in Garment Industry

Laser machines made their mark in the apparel industries since the 19th century, but with the recent trends and public demands, they seem to have gained some popularity.

Majorly, Laser technology is useful for cutting garments patterns, designer neckties, 3D body scanning, engraving leather, and many more.

The major reason behind the wide application of lasers in the garment industry is because of less cost, flexibility, and trade deals.

Basically, The Laser is an energy source and has an intensity and power that is controllable. The laser beam focuses on a specific angle depending on the application. You can cut a variety of objects ranging from flexible fabric to rigid and strong metal.

Laser equipment is very popular in textile, leather and garment industries because of its accuracy, efficiency, simplicity, and automation.

For example, the traditional cutting tools like band blades, discs, and knives may face some limitations. Especially on the delicate materials as the cutting force can displace the material. This can lead to inaccurate cutting of the materials. Whereas, the traditional cutting methods require an operator to have full attention.

There is a tradeoff between the maximum speed of cutting and accuracy. Additionally, there are other limitations like complex cutting, tools, longevity and machine downtime during tool serving. On the other side, these limitations are not present in laser devices; this helps to achieve efficiency and reduces cost.

Laser cutting is useful in most of the industries as it offers perfect speed, high precision, simple operation and many other advantages in various different fields. But, with the clothing industry, laser machines and its parts like Amada laser parts, Mazak laser parts play a different role. They help in quickly cutting the leather graphics and drawing proper clothing models.

One of the major advantages of laser cutting operations involves a highly parallel beam to pass and focus to a perfect dot at the high-density energy and gives precise cutting speed. In the garment business, it is important to pay minute attention to the size of the garment. While processing precision, the main purpose is to achieve high efficiency and excellent tailoring.

There are many applications of laser apparel in manufacturing. Let’s have a brief about it: 

1. Detecting Fabric Fault:

Upon the arrival of the fabrics in the production unit, it becomes easy to detect faults using image processing. Laser optical transform analysis can be useful for fault detection in the fabric as the pattern repeats at regular intervals.

The laser focuses on the fabric and uses a fourier lens to produce the diffraction pattern of the fabric. On the other hand, the second fourier lens with the same focal length magnifies and inverts the test sample image.

The working may seem complex, but its application is simple.

A charged coupled device camera is useful to capture the image. It transfers and stores the data in the computers. Computer programming helps in finding faults by comparing the images and converting them in binary mode.

The computer program which is running helps in detecting the faults when the parameters are deviating from the predefined standards. The severity of the fault depends upon the amount of deviation from the standard.

2.Laser Cutting: 

For synthetic fabrics, laser cutting produces the proper edge as laser melts and fuses the edge. This helps in avoiding the problem of fraying which occurs due to conventional knife cutters.

Leather uses laser cutting heavily because of the precision it brings. It is useful to cut the fabric into desirable shapes. Having this for your garments can be a better and cheaper solution in comparison to a knife.

Here, I am listing some of the major benefits of laser machines:

• Clean and lint-free
• Laser marking, cutting and engraving all happens in one step
• The process is simple as it integrates with computer design
• High working speed
• Does not require much human intervention

3. Customization:

As the term goes, it is useful when the custom fit garment requirement occurs. It is on the basis of the body dimensions and the individual’s choice.

The major factor for mass customization is that there should be the right measurements. Laser scanning technology uses a single or multiple thin and sharp stripe lasers to measure body size. It also uses the camera to acquire the scene and assist the laser scanner.

In short, to use this feature at its best you need to make sure that the sizes are perfect, and your laser machine is running properly with its parts like Amada laser parts, Mazak laser parts.

Wrapping it up:

The Application of laser machines and its parts like Mazak laser parts in the garment industry is growing rapidly. This heavy usage and acceptance of laser machines bring a huge amount of advantages to the entire fashion industry.

Source: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s548/sh/a2b6f3c1-f44f-4543-8a9e-3abd23d1ab33/aeac62eeed207f249c979399b5691e8f

Evolution of the Press Brake

Bending a metal sheet is a pretty difficult task and as a fabricator, you might know just how challenging it is. But there are press brakes now. They have definitely made this task a little less difficult.

Being a proud owner of press brake, you might know the details of its evolution.

No? 

Don’t worry, because we are going to talk about just that in this article. The evolution of press brake machines.

Technology advancements have brought immense growth and expansion for every industry. Be it automotive, travel, education, metal fabrication, you name it; technology is there.

Digitalizing the automotive industry has helped companies to increase competitiveness among themselves. Additionally, it is even enhancing customer satisfaction and provides them with an excellent quality of service.

Similarly, in education, digitalization helps in making sure that education reaches everyone. Not only this but online learning also benefits people a lot as it makes knowledge easily accessible.

But we are here to talk about digitalization of the metal fabrication industry.

So, let’s look at how the evolution of technology provides ease to a fabricator.

Fabrication technology plays a vital role in changing the metal forming and welding. One tool which has changed a lot is Press Brake. Do you remember the time when you would bend sheets using manual press brake and how difficult it would be? Now there are hydraulic or electric press brakes that increase productivity and decrease costs.

So, let’s see how they evolved and where we stand with press brakes today.

This evolution of press brakes took place in three parts:

• Drive Systems
• Automation
• Coordinated Flow

In this article, we will explore the evolution of drive systems and automation which led to invention portal press brakes.

1. Drive Systems

In the early 1960s, there was mechanical press brake. The system had a motor with clutch, flywheel, eccentric crank and brake and can generate only 30 strokes per minute.

The mechanical press was popular for sheet metal industry’s mass production for a long time but then the needs were changing which, in turn, led to changes in press brakes.

By the time production became the new craze in metal fabrication, fabricators demanded their machines to be flexible in function and to have better capabilities to create custom products for consumers in a short time.

The change in consumer production led to the development of hydraulic press brake. It had controls for ram speeds, stroke lengths, applied force, and angle controls. Despite the slow pace, these brakes were useful until electric press brakes replaced them.

The introduction of the electric press brake was needed because of high demands, needs and constant change from customers’ behavior. It helped in increasing production speed for fabricators.

The electric press brake and the hybrid hydraulic electric drives have the approach speeds of 700 inches per minute (IPM) and bending speed as low as 5 inches per minute (IPM).

The different capabilities of these machines permit better functioning, efficiency, and precision in every bend.

2. Automation

The Industrial Revolution went on for over 150 years and played a vital role in the way we see manufacturing.

Before, press brake operators spent a large amount of time in programming, test bending, inspecting and adjusting the products and machines.

Current press brakes can perform accurate measurements and solve angular errors if any. It offers precise bending and better customization without you having to pay a lot of attention. All thanks to technology and parts like Mitsubishi laser parts and Mazak laser parts.

This revolution has improved the storage and the use of computer programs has made it easy to design and setup machines. It also helps in speeding up the designing process making the fabrication process faster and precise.

3. Ease of Use

Portable press brake comes with improved speed and makes the fabrication process easy. These machines are smaller and occupy little space in shops. Their size makes it easy to transport and use it.

Regardless of the fabrication project, the usage of press brake allows work to finish with less production time and ease. Once the sheets are ready, they are cut into sizable sheets using laser cutting with parts like Mitsubishi laser parts and Mazak laser parts.

Wrapping it up:

Digitalization has always helped mankind. Be it in automobiles, education, fabrication industry, etc. It brings ease to human life. The technology revolution which happened in the fabrication industry made the bending of materials and lives of fabricators easier. Apart from technology, quality parts like Mitsubishi laser parts and Mazak laser parts have also played a vital role in the improvement of press brakes.

5 Ways to Improve your Flow of Laser-cut Parts

Being a fabricator is not an easy job. One of the hardest tasks you might have is to maintain the efficiency of your laser cut machine. And you can do so by following adequate steps to improve the flow of laser-cut parts through a fabrication shop. Using quality parts like Bystronic laser parts, Mazak laser parts will benefit you for a streamlined flow. Here is how you can speed up your laser production by maintaining the flow of laser cut parts.

1. Shop Layout

From all the areas of concern, it is most important that the layout you are working is efficient. Your shop’s layout can make or break even the most versatile production plan. A point to note is that the more time your parts spend in transit or waiting for delivery, your overall efficiency will reduce and can affect the production and overall the plant.

In the ideal scenario, the incoming material should load directly into or nearby the main machinery and all the secondary operations should happen near the laser output area. You must be wondering this is such an obvious thing. But sometimes fabricators do not pay much attention to the layout while installing the laser machine. To overcome this layout mistake, usually, fabricators or owners use a patchwork approach. And when a patchwork approach to shop is inefficient, the entire shop layout would need a redesign.

Any layout’s basic objective is ensuring the smooth flow of work, material, parts, and information through a system. When you understand the overall flow of the shop, it can help the material move efficiently. 

2. Proper Maintenance

It is important to consider that maintenance is an equally important part when it comes to laser machinery. To be honest, some fabricators don’t pay much attention to the maintenance of their parts. Unless they experience some problems in the speed or accuracy, they will not feel obligated to maintain their lasers or their quality Amada parts. 

It is important to stay on top of the recommended maintenance activities. Because once a problem occurs, the equipment operator won’t be that much more productive. You don’t have to pay much attention because today’s manufactured lasers come with enhanced options that make it easier to practice healthy maintenance. You can schedule and set a regime that allows you to stay on top of your maintenance schedule.

3. Programming

It becomes crucial to program automated material and part handling, majorly for maintaining efficiency. In the production industry, it has become a necessity to have automation. It yields double or triple results. A shop that upholds a manual sheet can vastly have different outputs than a shop that has a completely automated system.

To help avoid downtime, it is necessary to optimize your plant layout, maintaining your equipment on a schedule, programming, and automation, monitoring your production.

In the past years, program software developers used such algorithms that homed parts with as little waste as possible. This saves you more money which means more money left in the pocket of the manufacturer. It is important to maintain integrity in laser nests while unloading them automatically so that they can render at various locations. It is true in cases where high-capacity carts are in use. Because a stack of cut sheets can become a tangle of parts and scrap.

4. Automation

Technology never stops providing better tools for increased efficiency in the workflow. After optimizing your shop layout, performing maintenance and programming, it is important to set out to stride toward laser automation.

If you can operate your industrial laser with 50 percent efficiency then it is pretty much good! The most common beam-on times for an average mix of materials have hovered between 30 and 40 percent historically. But your laser could be capable of more than that. If you add a very basic load and unload automation system, it can increase your beam-on time to more than 80 percent.

If you use standard cart unloading, it might create denoting bottlenecks which can delay the arrival of parts downstream. Conveyors are popular as they allow denesting to occur at the same rate as production. It enables you to react more quickly to production issues. It gives you more time to downstream operations.

5. Monitoring the Production

To make some revolutionary improvements to your laser-cut-part flow, it is important to understand and track all the jobs. When you get statistics like beam-on-time, transit delays, maintenance schedules, and process bottlenecks, it can help you in achieving continuous improvement.

There some laser cutting equipment that comes with a production monitoring option. When there are robust production monitoring and support system intact, you can design and provide transparency to your machine process anytime. it will enable you to achieve real-time access to an extensive amount of data through your desktop or mobile device. To find quality laser parts you can go for Bystronic laser parts and Mazak laser parts for the quality outputs.

How to Maintain Laser Cutting Machines?

With the laser cutters, you can produce the most accurate and high-quality cuts for fabrication. In order to maintain the efficiency and consistency of these machines throughout, fabricators need to perform preventive maintenance on a regular base. After all the laser cutter is an expensive piece of equipment. The first tip is to avoid procrastination. Because the lack of maintenance leads to a lower quality cut without any perfection. To understand how laser parts can work more optimally, read the below steps to keep your laser machines up to date.

Never Leave the Laser Machine Unattended
One of the Laser Materials like acrylic is prone to catch fire when it goes unattended during the cutting process. There have been instances when people had to replace the whole laser cutting machine in cases of fire. To eliminate such cases, we need to make sure that someone is within 3 feet area all the time.

Keep the Lens Clean
Every fabricator has a different type of laser cutting schedule. Daily maintenance is one of the major things we need to make sure for the laser parts involved in the process. If you wish to replace any of them consider Mazak laser parts. They come with good quality features and provide an ample amount of cutting. One more thing to make sure that after the cutting schedule, check the lens and clean if necessary. As the top lens and mirror are right above the laser beam and exposed to a lot of dirt, smokes, debris, and fumes. With the dirty lens you might get:

• A need of lower speeds or higher power to cut.
• Uneven and blurry images.
• Damaged lenses

The simple way of cleaning the lens and mirror is removing it gently and cleaning both the sides with a q-tip or lens paper.

Clean out the Filters
With regular maintenance tasks, you need to maintain the filter as well. Based on its usage and the type of materials, you need to change the inner ‘pad’ pre-filer and clean the foam dust collector.

Here are the hints that indicate that you need to replace the filter:

• Smoke is collecting in the laser bay.
• Fire/flares in the bay.
• Odor emanating from the machine.
• The filter is dirty on both sides.

Here are the steps to follow to replace the filter:

1. Open up the machine.
2. You will see the inner filtration assembly inside. There would be a foam dust collector inside the metal mess. Since it catches the big dust particles, rinse this out in the sink and dry it out.
3. There would be a wrapped pad pre-filter on the outside.
4. You can buy new pre-filters and wrap them around.

Consider Warranties
Warranties are a key part of the buying process. If you are a fabricator and pursuing a maintenance contract or extended warranty, it is important for the purchasing department to have a complete understanding of points covered in it. Do the contract cover maintenance and parts? If yes then does it cover quality laser parts Trumpf laser parts? Is there any discount provided on any needed replacement part? How much more an emergency service call would cost without a contract? What are the possible limits of the contract?

Replace Charcoals
With the cutting, plastics, there are chances of developing odors. However, the pre-filer works the best to get rid of particle matter. But the Electrocorp also has 20 lbs of carbon particles. And they absorb the nasty smell. Eventually, the charcoal gets 'full' and doesn’t absorb fumes.

Some indications that you need to replace the charcoal:

• The smell of burning plastic is strong.
• Smoke sucked away.
• The filter is clean but the problem doesn't go away.
• The charcoal smells of fumes.

To replace the charcoal, pour out and throw out the old charcoal. Pour in cup-full of fresh charcoal while tamping down with a rubber matter or a wooden dowel to pack the charcoal.

Final Thoughts
Maintenance of laser parts is varied by its usage and type. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to properly maintain the laser fabrication process. And while you replace the laser parts, you can find several options from the web if you write queries like ‘Trumpf laser parts’ and ‘Mazak laser parts. The maintenance lessons result in a more consistent, reliable, and cost-effective laser operations.

Benefits of Fiber Lasers You Were Unaware of!

Laser cutting, as you all know has become the to go process to cutting due to the convenience, ease, and quality of output it provides. As soon as the manufacturers embraced this form laser cutting, different types of laser cutting technologies followed. Plasma cutting, CO2 Laser cutting, Fiber laser cutting became some of the widely used metal cutting techniques.

For a long time now, fiber laser cutting machines have earned quite a lot of reputation due to the number of benefits they provide. They’ve proved to be better as compared to Co2 laser machines that ask for a lot of maintenance. The costs spent behind lasing gases, beam delivery bellows, and mirrors have also died down. Not just that, the overall productivity speeds have also gone up.

There are times when you might have to invest into Mazak or Bystronic Laser Parts for your fiber lasers but the chances are much less with the kind of outputs they provide. So, what are the other benefits that Fiber lasers can provide you with? Let’s find out:

Offer Enhanced Consistency

The operators of fiber lasers are always raving about the kind of consistency that Fiber lasers offer. The best part about them is that one hardly needs to adjust the parameters and there is also a difference in material quality. As fiber doesn’t need short term degradation like mirror-based optics of CO2, operator doesn’t need to make many adjustments for maintaining the edge quality.

Also, there is no beam alignment needed as all the parameters remain consistent for long time. Whenever you need to undertake a cutting task, all you need to do is turn the system on and it starts working immediately. No need to wait for the laser to produce vacuum, warm up the optics or cycle the gases. So, make the most out of laser’s working as quickly as you switch the lights on and off.

No Maintenance Needed

Although fiber laser doesn’t use mirrors for beam delivery or generation purposes, the machine availability time has substituted the time that goes into re-aligning, cleaning, or replacing optics. Also, one doesn’t need beam delivery systems like bellow systems as one doesn’t have to spend time on replacing or checking these systems.

Furthermore, you do not need to make nozzle alignments as they come with a fixed focal length and cutting head. There’s also no need to changing filter or vacuum pump as fiber laser doesn’t have these components. As you can eliminate the above given maintenance tasks, fiber laser offers more machine availability for production time.

Cut Reflective Metals with Ease

With traditional lasers, reflective materials are always an issue. At times, laser bounces off the reflective material and does a lot of damage to the laser cutting machine. Hence, when it comes to cutting metals like copper, brass and aluminium, Fiber Optic Cables become the first and the most preferred choice.

When it comes to Fiber lasers, it is better not to undermine its features and forget its benefits. This is because the technology is not just cost-effective and faster to operate but also asks for less maintenance by offering more productivity and availability. You can easily find Mazak laser parts for your Fiber lasers as and when you want. And just like every spare part of the laser, they are sure to provide the value for money.

We hope that the above given points provided you with enough insights on the benefits of Fiber lasers. However, it is always advisable to conduct R&D and know about the machinery in detail before you invest into it. Buy from the best!

Originally Posted Here : https://www.sooperarticles.com/automotive-articles/benefits-fiber-lasers-you-were-unaware-1693860.html