Laser cutting technology is widely used in the sheet metal processing industry.
The principle is to use an auxiliary gas to melt or vaporize the surface of the workpiece by focusing a high-energy-density laser beam on it using laser cutting technology.
Although laser cutting technology is now widely used, it is still relatively advanced overall, thanks to the uniqueness of its processing method.
Laser cutting technology has become a widely adopted, technologically mature, and well-developed process in today’s machining operations.
Its application is becoming increasingly common and more deeply integrated into various industries.
This helps enhance the quality of their mechanical parts and improve processing efficiency, ultimately strengthening their competitive advantage in the market.
Laser cutting principle
The following are the essential components of laser cutting.
Laser
As shown in Figure 1, a laser mainly comprises three parts: a pump source, a gain medium, and an optical resonant cavity. Several key components work together to realize the laser’s operation mechanism.
First, the pump source provides energy, which feeds the entire system.
Subsequently, the gain medium absorbs this energy and induces a population inversion, where particles transition from low-energy to high-energy.
Under certain conditions, this leads to stimulated emission, resulting in the amplification and output of the laser.
The optical resonator is the “amplifier” and “selector” in this process.
The light undergoes repeated reflection, which prolongs the interaction time between the light and the gain medium.
This enhances the stimulation of light, allowing the light to provide a closed space. In this space, the stimulation of the light further amplifies the light’s intensity.
Additionally, the resonance cavity plays a key role by selecting a specific light wavelength, ensuring the light wave’s gradual amplification.
Only the light waves that meet the conditions of the resonance cavity can stabilize and persist within the cavity.
Eventually, after enough reflection and amplification, the light in the resonant cavity reaches a certain threshold in intensity. It is released from a particular end of the resonant cavity or a specific location in the form of a laser.
This process not only realizes the amplification and conversion of light energy but also gives the laser its unique monochromatic, directional, and coherent characteristics.
Focusing system
The focusing system occupies a pivotal position in a laser cutting machine and plays a key role in the precise guidance of the laser beam.
The system’s carefully designed sequence of optical elements utilizes a refined mechanism of refraction and reflection.
This guides and concentrates the laser beam to a tiny focal point, with a diameter reduced to a few micrometers, ensuring the process’s ultimate precision.
The excellent performance of the focusing system is directly related to the precision and quality level of the laser cutting operation, and it has become one of the important indexes for measuring the performance of the laser cutting machine.
Therefore, equipped with a high-quality focusing system, a laser cutting machine can efficiently and accurately process the indispensable key configuration.
Cooling system and control system
The cooling system is an indispensable part of the laser cutting machine. It uses circulating coolant or air to efficiently and quickly discharge the heat generated during the laser operation.
This ensures the laser remains within a stable, appropriate working temperature range.
This system is an important cornerstone to ensure the continued efficient operation of the equipment.
Intelligent Core of the Machine
The control system, like the laser cutting machine’s intelligent brain, agilely captures and analyzes the user’s operating instructions. These instructions are then converted into precise control signals for each functional component, driving the entire cutting process in an orderly manner.
In addition, the control system is equipped with an advanced fault diagnosis and alarm mechanism. It continuously monitors the equipment’s operating status.
If any abnormalities or potential problems are detected, the system will promptly respond by notifying the operator.
This effectively prevents the fault from worsening, ensuring the smoothness and safety of the production process.
Working Principle: Coordinated Synergy of Core Components
In general, the principle of laser cutting is relatively simple and easy to understand, through the above three essential components of the mutual synergy, you can use the laser for cutting operations:
The laser and focusing system concentrates the laser energy in a tiny area, rapidly increasing the temperature at the focal point.
This process continues until the point of light vaporizes or melts the surface of the mechanical workpiece.
At this time, the equipment temperature is very high, which will need to be utilized to the cooling system to ensure the regular operation of the equipment;
At the same time, the control system can realize the laser equipment following the design of the trajectory movement, so that the mechanical workpiece can get the desired processing shape.
Of course, external oxygen must be introduced to accelerate the combustion process of high-temperature metal materials and improve operational efficiency.
Typical Laser Cutting Machines
A typical machine to look at the principle of laser cutting in detail:
The LS-T60020S Fully closed Tube Cutting Machine innovatively integrates an advanced multi-chuck system.
The core design highlight is based on the traditional double chuck structure, with the addition of a fourth chuck and a tail chuck in the unloading area.
This innovation strengthens the ability to pull, securely clamp, and effectively support tubes and realizes an automated cutting and unloading process with no tail material loss.
The LS-T60020S uses four chucks working together to precision machine long and heavy tubes, greatly improving their stability and safety during the machining process.
The joint clamping of the four chucks strengthens the pipe’s support and improves the chuck’s load-bearing capacity.
It also plays a corrective role by compensating for slight pipe deformations, ensuring that processing precision is maintained.
Essential is the precise arrangement of the center chuck and the new fourth chuck.
These chucks are positioned on both sides of the cutting head, forming a close support system that effectively improves the accuracy of the cutting operation.
Efficient Tail Cutting with Intelligent Control
The system shows high flexibility and efficiency when facing the pipe tail cutting.
Through intelligent control, the main and center chuck are released at the right time at the upper material side, while the fourth and tail chuck clamp the tube independently.
The laser cutting head is then precisely positioned on the left side of the fourth chuck to make fine cuts on the remaining pipe, thereby maximizing the tail material of the crushed end output.
In this process, the simultaneous support of the double chuck ensures the stability of the cutting operation. This guarantees both the cutting accuracy and the quality of the final product.
The LS-T60020S fully enclosed pipe cutting machine, as shown in Figure 2, exemplifies this setup.
Advantages of laser cutting
High cutting accuracy, narrow slit
As previously described, laser cutting technology is an advanced processing method. It cleverly utilizes monochromatic and highly coherent laser beams focused on a tiny area.
Through the precision of laser cutting equipment, this technology enables high-efficiency and high-quality cutting of materials.
It is precisely because of these focused laser beams, coupled with precision equipment, that the laser cutting process is more accurate.
Typical laser cutting equipment has an accuracy of 0.5mm and repeatability of 0.02mm, and the accuracy of top-of-the-line laser cutting equipment has become even higher with the optimization of the laser cutting process.
The accuracy of laser cutting equipment is mainly due to the laser beam being focused onto a tiny area.
This focused beam forms an excellent light point, concentrating the energy density. Once this energy density reaches a certain threshold, it causes the material in the focal area to heat rapidly, eventually melting or vaporizing it.
A clear and precise hole is formed as the material vapors quickly escape. When the laser beams are moved, the energy density is continuously released, and a series of fine holes are connected to form a narrow and precise fissure (cutting path).
Cutting surface smooth speed
Laser cutting technology is known for its excellent effect, producing relatively smooth cutting surfaces.
The maturity of this process is also relatively high. After cutting, the surface of the material is generally clean and free of burrs.
While the roughness may not match that of specialized finishing processes, it can still be controlled to Ra12.5 or less.
Laser cutting technology shows apparent advantages compared to traditional processing methods, such as plasma processing or manual operation.
As mentioned above, it can accurately control the shape and size deviation of the processed parts, i.e., high precision, which also ensures the consistency and neatness of the section of the parts after laser processing.
This feature greatly simplifies the subsequent splicing, assembly and other processes, optimizing the entire processing process, eliminating the tedious grinding steps, thus comprehensively improving the overall quality of the product.
With a concentrated beam of light, laser cutting enables rapid heating.
The workpiece can be melted or vaporized quickly, increasing the cutting speed accordingly.
The cutting speed can easily reach 10 m/min, with a positioning speed of up to 70 m/min. These capabilities highlight the significant speed advantages during operation.
This speed performance is far beyond the traditional linear cutting method, fully demonstrating the enormous advantages of laser cutting in speed.
Machining applications of laser cutting technology
As an advanced processing method, laser cutting technology is widely used for various types of materials.
These include metal materials such as titanium, steel, and aluminum alloys and non-metallic materials like glass, plastics, and ceramics, demonstrating its wide adaptability and flexibility.
The most significant feature of this technology is its non-contact processing mode, effectively avoiding the workpiece deformation caused by direct contact in traditional machining.
Metal workpiece processing
Laser cutting technology has become indispensable in the field of metal processing, especially in the modern machinery manufacturing industry.
The advantages of laser cutting lie in its high precision, high efficiency, and adaptability to a variety of materials. This makes it suitable for diverse application cases in the field of metal processing, covering a wide range of uses.
Take the automobile manufacturing industry as an important application field — laser cutting technology.
For a large number of metal parts, such as the body, doors, roof, engine parts, etc., traditional mechanical processing methods are not only time-consuming and high-cost but also may cause greater damage to the material.
Laser cutting technology can improve processing efficiency, reduce production costs, and ensure the accuracy and quality of the workpiece.
Laser cutting can play a role in the processing of small screw holes to large areas of sheet metal parts, to achieve a variety of specifications and precision requirements.
Stainless steel cutting
For example, laser cutting technology is also typically applied to the processing of stainless steel and other materials.
Stainless steel is highly corrosion resistant, beautiful, and generous. It is used in construction, automotive, home appliances, and many other fields, and it has a wide range of applications.
Laser cutting can effectively process different thicknesses of stainless steel materials, and the quality of the cutting surface is high.
The quality of the kerf can even be comparable with traditional mechanical cutting.
For example, many structural parts of the aircraft and key components must be processed by laser cutting.
These high-precision materials and structures have extremely high processing accuracy and quality requirements.
Due to the high-precision characteristics of laser cutting, traditional processing methods find it difficult to meet these needs, whereas laser cutting is perfectly suited to this area.
Applied to the processing of non-metallic materials
Due to the high absorption rate of laser light, laser cutting technology has become an ideal choice for processing non-metallic materials such as various plastics, glass, ceramics, etc.
First, laser cutting of non-metallic materials is fast because non-metallic materials have a higher laser absorption rate than metals, which means that the laser can heat and vaporize the material faster.
For example, laser cutting can efficiently complete complex cutting jobs when making templates or cutting precision parts such as complex jeweled bearing holes, greatly reducing production cycles.
Secondly, non-metallic materials usually have a lower thermal conductivity than metals, meaning the laser beam is more likely to focus its energy and less likely to cause side effects such as heat-affected zones.
As a result, lasers can achieve high-quality cuts in non-metallic materials. The cuts are usually very clean and do not require subsequent processing.
In specific application cases, such as machining holes for jewel bearings in watches, lasers can accurately cut high-precision holes for mounting jewels and keeping them in place.
Laser cutting can also quickly and accurately cut out the required parts when making prototype materials for 3D printing models.
Laser Cutting Technology in Mechanical Mold Manufacturing
The application of laser cutting technology in mechanical mold manufacturing is undoubtedly a great innovation for the modern manufacturing industry.
Its high precision, high efficiency, non-contact processing, wide range of material adaptability, and other advantages have completely changed the traditional mold manufacturing process.
In mechanical mold manufacturing, the laser cutting machine can accurately cut metal, non-metal, and other materials according to the design drawings for rapid, detailed cutting.
Whether complex geometric shapes or fine contour lines are involved, laser cutting easily accommodates them to ensure the accuracy and consistency of the mold.
This high-precision cutting capability improves the molds’ manufacturing quality, greatly shortens the production cycle, and reduces the manufacturing cost.
In addition, the non-contact processing characteristics of laser cutting avoid tool wear, cutting force, and other factors that lead to deformation of the mold or damage in the traditional machining process.
This not only protects the integrity of the mold material but also extends the life of the mold, and the scrap rate is reduced.
Due to the need to respond quickly to market changes, the frequent replacement of mold manufacturing enterprises, laser cutting technology provides great convenience.
Can be in a short period, to help enterprises to quickly launch new products, in the mold cutting production to seize the market opportunity.
Conclusion
Laser cutting technology has evolved into a critical and advanced sheet metal processing method, widely used across multiple industries due to its precision, efficiency, and versatility.
Laser cutting delivers high-quality, accurate cuts by utilizing high-energy-density laser beams and an intricate system of optical and cooling components.
It also ensures smooth, burr-free surfaces and minimal material deformation.
Its application spans various fields, from metal and non-metal processing to mechanical mold manufacturing, significantly improving production speed and part quality.
The continuous advancements in laser cutting systems, such as integrating multi-chuck systems and intelligent control features, further enhance their capabilities.
This ensures that industries can remain competitive in an increasingly demanding market.
As technology continues to mature, laser cutting will undoubtedly expand, leading to more efficient, cost-effective manufacturing processes across a range of sectors.