Laser Cutting Services
XYC Prototype: Your Trustworthy Laser Cutting Services Manufacturer!
Shenzhen Xie Yicheng Machinery Equipment Co., Ltd. is a professional processing prototypes equipment and service provider. Our company was established in 1997 and is located in Shenzhen, China, mainly aiming to markets such as the United States, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and India. We provide CNC processing, sheet metal bending, 3D, injection molding and other services, and use a variety of industrial-grade materials to build functional components in the automotive, medical, and consumer electronics fields.
Rich Experienced
With over 25 years of production experience, our team specializes in 3D printing, CNC machining, injection molding, and sheet metal fabrication to meet virtually any complex geometry part or finish requirement.
Well Equipped
Our production center is equipped with multi-axis CNC milling machines, CNC engraving machines, wire cutting machines, hand grinders, surface grinders and other equipment. We can quickly process complex parts for prototypes, small batches or high-volume production.
Quality Assurance
We conduct dimensional and visual inspections of each product during and after production, and strictly implement ISO 9001, AS 9100, ISO 14001 and ISO TS16949 quality standards.
Customized Services
We provide customized services for our products, include its dimensions, materials, and support OEM and ODM orders.
Laser cutting is a process that uses a laser to cut different materials for both industrial and more artistic applications, such as etching. The laser beam is created by the stimulation of lasing materials through electrical discharges or lamps inside a closed container. Laser cutting uses a high-power laser which is directed through optics and computer numerical control (CNC) to direct the beam or material. Typically, the process uses a motion control system to follow a CNC or G-code of the pattern that is to be cut onto the material. The focused laser beam burns, melts, vaporises or is blown away by a jet of gas to leave a high-quality surface finished edge.
Features of Laser Cutting Services
Wide Materials
Our laser cutting works on a variety of materials, including metal, plastic, rubber, foam and wood, and we offer single prototype, low-volume and high-volume production services.
Multi-source Files
Our cutting system is compatible with a variety of file formats, such as 3D CAD files (STEP, STP, SLDPRT, DXF, IPT, PRT or SAT files, etc.), and can provide you with rapid design and quotation.
Flexible Cutting
Our laser cutters use both fiber lasers and CO2 lasers and can cut metal materials up to 4 inches. For materials thicker than 4 inches, we also use waterjet cutting or plasma cutting services.
Quick Turnaround
Our team combines the latest cutting, bending and stamping technology with automation to provide instant sheet quotes that can usually be dispatched within a week.
Application of Laser Cutting Services
Automotive Industry
Laser cutting has found a home in the automotive industry due to its ability to reproduce parts with relative speed and accuracy. Laser cutting is used to cut metals and plastics to form body parts, electronic components, interior covers and buttons for automobiles. In addition, laser cutting machines can engrave buttons on automotive interiors to allow light to shine through and record serial and part numbers on manufactured parts. Molds used to cut different parts can also be cut with a laser.
Mold and Tooling Industry
As previously noted, laser cutting can be utilized to make molds for duplicate parts. In tool manufacturing, laser cutters can be used for marking and engraving in the automotive industry and for making simple hand tools. The speed of laser cutters may even make them better than die cutting on strong metals. Because of the versatility of its material uses, you can even laser engrave company logos and tool information on the rubber handles of most tools.
Jewellery Industry
The precision of laser cutting makes it easy to use in jewellery making processes. For example, imagine a watch with many small gears. Creating a ring or bracelet of precise width, depth and diameter can be easily accomplished with a laser. Lasers can also engrave designs and inscriptions on interior or exterior surfaces.
Medical Device Manufacturing
Laser surgery allows surgeons to make precise cuts, and patients heal faster. Laser cut parts are used to manufacture medical devices that improve the quality of life for patients. For example, stents, valve frames, vascular clips, bone hinges, flexible shafts and reamers are all made from laser cut parts.
Benefits of Laser Cutting Services
Lasers employ a focused beam of light to cut objects with extreme precision. The laser is powerful and tiny, but it melts and evaporates material with unrivalled precision. Most of the time, laser tolerances range from 0.003 mm to 0.006 mm.
Plasma cutters have a tolerance level of about 0.02 mm, which is higher than laser cutting. Similarly, other cutting tools have tolerance levels between 1 and 3 mm, or even higher. Suppose that a high precision and accuracy machine is required in the manufacturing process. In this case, the preferred tool is usually a laser cutter. Therefore, the aerospace industry uses laser cutting, which requires tight tolerance levels.
Laser cutting has an economic advantage over other CNC machines of the same caliber, which is one of the advantages of laser technology. Custom tools are no longer necessary, thanks to laser cutting technology. You also don’t need to modify the equipment for any project because no additional cutting tools are needed.
In addition, there is no physical contact, so there is no wear and tear on the surface. Because laser cutting machines have few mechanical parts, they are less expensive to maintain than other processing technologies. The machine’s running cost will also be lower compared to traditional manufacturing tools.
The company is a 'Member of China Interior Decoration Association', 'National Excellent Enterprise in Air Interior Decoration', and was rated as 'Top Ten Brands of Electric Curtains', with 7 product patents, and it is well-known in the industry.
When you cut material with a laser cutter, only a very small amount of material is wasted. This makes laser cutting stand out from other machines with a significant portion of material. With a laser cutter, manufacturers can maximize the use of material. As resources are utilized more efficiently, less material is wasted, and production costs are reduced.
Another benefit of laser cutting is avoiding damage, even to the narrowest of materials. Many people tend to believe misinformation about the machine, believing that distortion or damage to the material is inevitable. This popular belief premise that high heat is used in the laser cutting process. You should note that heat affects only a small material area and does not affect tolerances. Laser cutting of sheets is amazingly fast, so the time required for cutting is less. As a result, manufacturers can easily avoid warping and distortion.
It would help if you had a lot of power to achieve a cut in real life. However, laser cutting machines do not have any other moving parts, which reduces energy consumption. In contrast, machines with movable parts tend to consume more energy. In addition, laser cutters cut material in a very fast time. This helps save time and power. When less energy is consumed, the cost of operation is also reduced.
Types of Laser Used for Cutting
The three main types of lasers used for cutting, are CO2, Nd-YAG (Neodymium Yttrium-Aluminum-Garnet) lasers, and fiber-optic lasers. They differ in the materials used to generate the laser beam.
Fiber-optic Laser
Fiber-optic lasers are the newest and most popular types of lasers because that they can generate different wavelengths for more precise cutting. They use an optical fiber cable made of silica glass to guide the light. The laser beam produced by fiber-optic lasers is more precise because it is straighter and smaller.
Fiber lasers vary according to their laser source mixture, including ytterbium-doped, thulium-doped, and erbium-doped. The choice of mixture is dependent on the application where they will be used and their wavelengths. For example, erbium generates light in the 1528 nm to 1620 nm range. Ytterbium produces light with wavelengths of 1030 nm, 1064 nm, and 1080 nm.
The two modes of fiber optic lasers are single and multiple with the core diameter of single-mode lasers being between 8 µ to 9 µ while multiple mode lasers have diameters of 50 µ up to 100 µ. Of the two modes, single-mode lasers are more efficient and produce a better quality beam of light.
Fiber-optic lasers are classified as solid-state since their power source is silica glass mixed with rare earth elements. This is contrary to CO2 lasers that use gas to create their power. An additional difference between the two forms of power is their wavelengths, with fiber-optic lasers producing wavelengths of 780 nm up to 2200 nm while CO2 lasers have wavelengths of 9600 nm up to 10,600 nm.
CO2 Lasers
This type has a gas discharge lasing medium filled with 10 – 20% carbon dioxide, 10 – 20% nitrogen, traces of hydrogen and xenon, and helium for balance. Instead of light, laser pumping is done by discharging an electrical current. When the electrical discharge passes through the lasing medium, nitrogen molecules become excited, bringing it to a higher energy level. Unlike what was described before, these excited nitrogen molecules do not lose their energy by photon emission. Rather, it transfers its vibrational mode energy to CO2 molecules. This process continues until most of the CO2 molecules are in a metastable state. The CO2 molecules then emit infrared light at either 10.6 µm or 9.6 µm, which brings them to lower energy levels. The resonating mirrors are designed to reflect the emitted photons on those wavelengths. One mirror is a partially reflecting mirror allowing the release of the infrared beam that is used for cutting the material. After releasing infrared light, the CO2 molecules return to the ground state by transferring their remaining energy to the doped helium atoms. The cold helium atoms then become hot which are cooled by the cooling system of the laser. The efficiency of a CO2 laser is around 30% which is higher than other lasers.
Crystal (Ruby, Nd, and Nd-YAG) Lasers
Unlike the CO2 laser, this type is a solid-state laser that uses a synthetic crystal as a lasing medium. The most popular is the YAG (Y3Al5O12) crystal doped with 1% ionized neodymium (Nd3+). The Nd ions replace the Y ions in the crystal structure in this crystal. The length of the rod is about 4 inches (10 cm) with a diameter of 2.4 to 3.5 inches (6 to 9 cm). The ends of the YAG rod are polished and coated by highly reflective materials acting as the resonator system.
Laser pumping is achieved by krypton flashlamps or laser diodes. This laser pumping excites the Nd ions into higher energy levels. After a short while, the excited Nd ions move into a lower, more stable state, without emitting photons. This process goes on until the medium is populated with excited Nd ions. From its metastable state, the Nd ions release infrared light with a wavelength of 1064 nm.
Different Methods of Laser Cutting
Next will be the methods of laser cutting—how the small bits of materials are removed to produce a cut. There are four main methods of laser cutting: sublimating, melting, reacting, and thermal stress fracturing.
Sublimating or Vaporizing
Sublimation is a type of phase change from a solid state to a gaseous state, with no intermediate liquid phase. This is the same process of how dry ice turns into a vapor without becoming a liquid. The material quickly absorbs energy in which there is no chance for melting to occur. The same principle is applied to laser cutting, wherein a high amount of energy is imparted into the material in a relatively short time that causes direct phase change of the material from solid to gaseous states, with as little melting as possible.
The cut begins by creating an initial keyhole or kerf. In the kerf, there is more absorptivity which causes the material to vaporize more quickly. This sudden vaporization creates a material vapor with high pressure that further erodes the walls of the kerf while ejecting materials from the cut. This deepens and enlarges the hole or cut made. This process is suitable for cutting plastics, textiles, wood, paper, and foam, which requires only small amounts of energy to be vaporized.
Melting
In comparison with sublimation, melting requires less energy to achieve. The energy required is about a tenth of the sublimating laser cuts. In this process, the laser beam heats the material, which causes it to melt. As the material melts, a jet of gas from the coaxial nozzle with the laser beam expels the material from the cut. The assist gasses used are inert or non-reacting (e.g., helium, argon, and nitrogen), which only aids the cutting through mechanical means. Because of its low energy requirement is used for cutting non-oxidizing or active metals such as stainless steel, titanium, and aluminum alloys.
Reactive Laser Cutting
In this process, a reactive gas is used to generate more heat by reacting with the material. The process begins by melting the material with a laser beam. As the material melts, a stream of oxygen gas comes out of the coaxial nozzle, reacting with the molten metal. The reaction between the metal and oxygen is an exothermic process which means heat is released. This heat assists in the melting of the material, which is about 60% of the total energy required to cut the material. The molten metal oxides are expelled by the pressure of the oxygen jet.
Aside from the lower energy required from the laser beam, cutting speeds using reactive gasses are faster than laser cutting with inert gasses. However, since this process relies on a chemical reaction, the molten metal oxide that is not expelled by the oxygen jet forms along the edge of the cut. This produces low-quality cuts than using inert gasses. This process is used to cut thick carbon steels, titanium steels, and other easily oxidized metals.
Thermal Stress Fracture
This process involves introducing a small kerf at depths of about one-third the thickness of the material using a laser. The laser is then used to induce localized stresses. This is achieved by heating a small spot which creates compressive forces around it. After passing the laser beam, the area slightly cools, creating thermal stresses. In some designs, coolants are used to assist in the generation of thermal stress. When these induced stresses reach failure levels, a crack is propagated that causes separation.
CO2 lasers are widely used for this application since infrared light with a wavelength of 10.6 µm is ideal for cutting most nonmetals. However, not all materials can be cut by one type of laser since different materials absorb light at different wavelengths. Thermal stress fractures are widely used to cut brittle materials such as ceramics and glass.
Stealth Dicing
This is a laser cutting technology originally developed by Hamamatsu Photonics which is used in cutting semiconductor wafers and parts of microelectromechanical systems or MEMS. In this type of cutting, the initial kerf is created at an internal point within the material. Stealth dicing is a dry cutting process where the cut produced is clean with no molten deposits.
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Frequently Asked Questions of Laser Cutting
Q: What is meant by laser cutting?
Q: What is the process of laser cutting?
Q: What can laser cutting do?
Q: What are the pros and cons of laser cutting?
Q: What materials Cannot be cut with a laser cutter Why?
Metals with Reflective Surfaces: Highly reflective metals, such as copper and aluminum, can reflect the laser beam back into the machine, potentially damaging the optics.
PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride): Cutting PVC can release harmful chlorine gas, posing health risks and damaging the laser system.
More items..
Q: What is better than laser cutting?
Q: Can you laser cut wood?
Q: What is the easiest material to laser cut?
Q: Is there money in laser cutting?
Q: Can laser cut diamond?
Q: How deep does laser cutting go?
Q: How long does laser cutting take?
Q: Is laser cutting wood expensive?
Q: What are 3 materials that the laser cutter can cut?
Q: How thick of wood can a laser cut?
Q: How much does waterjet cutting cost compared to laser cutting?
Q: How many inches can a laser cutter cut per minute?
Q: How are lasers harmful to humans?
Q: What is the greatest risk from lasers?
Q: Can cardboard be laser cut?
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