Laser cutting stainless steel
Trumpf 3030 3KW fibre laser cutter in action. When the machine is going at full speed on thin gauge material like this it’s very impressive. You can see where we have taken out the first 2 parts in the corner of the sheet to check them out for size before running the batch of parts
Trumpf 3030 fibre laser in action
The Trumpf 3030 fibre laser uses a fibre optic cable to transfer the power of the laser from its source in the resonator down to the cutting head at the sheet. The advantages of the new type of laser cutter is the removal of all mirrors along the beam width enabling more consistent focusing and greatly reduce machine maintenance. The frequency of the laser beam light is also different from the CO2 lasers and can only be viewed through a special safety filter glass which gives a yellow glow to the photographs that you can see here.
Stainless steel components in a laser cut nest
The metal sheet is laid onto a series of spikes that support it on the bed of the laser cutting machine. The spikes are spaced out to support the material but with the minimum number of contact points to reduce any marks on the underside of the metal while it is being cut. Once the individual parts have been cut from the parent sheet they may fall through the bed and be collected on a conveyor system. They may be large enough to simple sit on top of the spikes or as in this case not small enough to fall through but just tip leaving a rather pleasing pattern in the sheet.
Stainless steel components
The final laser cut parts were folded up into a U shape on one of our Trumpf 7036 CNC press brakes and then shipped out to the customer. When laser cutting the stainless steel parts it was easy to put small corner rads on the component to make it safe to handle. The laser machine actually prefers small rads to cut around rather than having to stop dead at a right angle corner.
Have a sheet metal job that you need laser cutting, please give us a call. The advantage of fibre laser cutting is the ability to laser cut mild steels, stainless steels, aluminium alloys and copper and brass.