Laser cutting sheet metal
V and F Sheet Metal are very proud and excited to announce that we now have a brand new laser cutting service in house here in Fareham, Hampshire. We are offering this service to our existing customers and for new work to enable us to offer a quicker lead time on parts and to improve part quality. Using a Trumpf 3030 3KW fiber laser we will be able to cut a range of materials including mild steel, stainless steel, zintec and galvanised coated steel, aluminium alloys, copper and brass. This investment in extended cutting ability and material thicknesses has been planned for a long time and has been enabled with the extra factory space we now have. Over the next few weeks we will be able to test out all the laser cutting features of our new machine and I will be posting examples of the work we are producing. Early tests show a perfect cut on thin gauges of metal even when using compressed air as the assist gas. We went for a fiber laser over a CO2 laser as it is cheaper to run and can cut quicker on thin sheet metal gauges (up to 4mm). The fibre laser can still cut up to 20mm thick but currently we will be limiting ourselves to thinner work while we get used to the machine.
Laser cutting examples
Here are some typical examples of laser cut sheet metal parts kindly supplied to us by Trumpf UK. You can see here how complex some geometries can be in a range of material thicknesses and yet they are cut with ease on the laser cutter. Using nitrogen, oxygen or compressed air we can cater for all material and offer parts priced according to suit their final use. More information will be posted to laser cutting gallery pages and a specific plant page on laser cutting over the following weeks as we build up a larger volume of work examples to demonstrate the machines cutting capability.
Laser cutting v CNC punching
Using laser cutting for some parts will enable us to remove the need for special tooling. This will be a great advantage for small volume items of prototypes. There will always be a place for CNC punching in our manufacturing plant with its ability to produce forms in components such as ventilation louvres, dimples, plunged hole. CNC punching is also very good at producing large volumes of holes with cluster tools very quickly. Basically we now have the best of both worlds with our Trumpf CNC punch presses and Trumpf laser cutter and look forward to offer a full range of services to our customers.