User blogs

Advantages of Laser Cutting

Laser cutting solved previous issues faced with manual cutting and gave the ability to work faster, more precisely and for longer periods of time whilst still delivering high-quality products. Common industries now making use of laser cutting services include automotive, aerospace, electronics, semiconductors and medical.Get more news about laser cutting line,you can vist our website!

What is CNC laser cutting?
Laser cutting works with the use of CAD files, it is a precise method of cutting a design from a given material. It involves firing a laser which then cuts the material using melting, burning or vaporising processes. Laser cutting has many benefits over conventional cutting methods. Due to this, Alpha Manufacturing delivers high precision sheet metal laser cutting services using the latest technologies, including CO2 and fibre laser machines.
Precision
Laser cutting technologies are highly focusable to about 25 microns, which is about 1/4 of the width of a strand of human hair, it has a positioning accuracy of 10 micrometres and repeatability of 5 micrometres. This makes it feasible to remove the minimum amount of material to make the cut, aiding precision and accuracy.

In laser cutting, the optic is fed compressed air via a jet system with a variety of nozzle widths available. This affects the cutting process by constantly expelling the evaporated material and residues making for a better cutting quality and keeping the focus optic free of dust. In conventional processes, the heat generated while cutting can cause damage to the material such as warping. Another advantage of high power laser cutting is that the area subjected to heat is very small, which reduces the risk of damage to the material. It also helps avoid costly repair and maintenance schedules for moving parts that contact the work surface.

A laser cutting machine gives highly accurate cuts that leave a clean and smooth finish. Traditional cutting services can only offer cutting lines as thin as the smallest diameter cutter, whereas the laser beam can be programmed to hundredths of a millimetre.

CNC laser cutting tolerances
CO2 lasers use a gas mixture and have an exceptionally high voltage, giving a powerful solution to sheet metal fabrication. Laser cutters offer minimal thermal input, with fine control over work area temperature. This is important since small parts heat up quickly and might otherwise overheat and deform.

Alpha Manufacturing uses the latest in laser technology, including fibre laser cutters. Fibre laser light is created by banks of diodes. The light is channelled and amplified through fibre optic cable similar to that used for data transfer. These can cut mild steel up to 25mm, stainless steel up to 20mm and aluminium up to 12mm.

new high-strength steel coil leveling line delivered

Guida Impianti, located in Italy, has established itself in the coil processing sector thanks to the high quality of its installations.Get more news about coil leveling,you can vist our website!
The company has recently installed one of its flagship products, a high-strength steel coil leveling line, at a customer's site. This line is capable of leveling steel coils with a yield strength exceeding 1,000 N/mm2, with widths up to 1200 mm and thicknesses up to 10 mm. The line stands out for its perfect leveling quality, achieving plastic deformation performance of kp 0.8. This leads to the final product having a smooth and uniform surface, without any deformation or bend. The production line is particularly useful for companies operating in the automotive, aerospace, and precision mechanics sectors, where the quality of the final product is essential.

Thanks to its experience in the industry and continuous search for new solutions, Guida Impianti can offer cutting-edge and highly efficient machinery that can adapt to the growing demands of the market.

Guida Impianti's latest high-strength steel coil leveling line represents an ideal solution for companies seeking high-quality and reliability in the steel sector.
Recent developments in coil-toplate processing technology have made it possible to achieve the benefits associated with discrete plate stretching on coil-to-plate cut-to-length stretch leveling lines. This paper explores the issues that needed to be resolved, the solutions developed and the results encountered during startup and commissioning of the new stretch leveling line at Universal Steel Co.

Smart laser cutter system detects different materials

With the addition of computers, laser cutters have rapidly become a relatively simple and powerful tool, with software controlling shiny machinery that can chop metals, woods, papers, and plastics. While this curious amalgam of materials feels encompassing, users still face difficulties distinguishing between stockpiles of visually similar materials, where the wrong stuff can make gooey messes, give off horrendous odors, or worse, spew out harmful chemicals.Get more news about laser cutting line,you can vist our website!

Addressing what might not be totally apparent to the naked eye, scientists from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) came up with “SensiCut,” a smart material-sensing platform for laser cutters. In contrast to conventional, camera-based approaches that can easily misidentify materials, SensiCut uses a more nuanced fusion. It identifies materials using deep learning and an optical method called “speckle sensing,” a technique that uses a laser to sense a surface’s microstructure, enabled by just one image-sensing add-on.

A little assistance from SensiCut could go a long way — it could potentially protect users from hazardous waste, provide material-specific knowledge, suggest subtle cutting adjustments for better results, and even engrave various items like garments or phone cases that consist of multiple materials.

“By augmenting standard laser cutters with lensless image sensors, we can easily identify visually similar materials commonly found in workshops and reduce overall waste,” says Mustafa Doga Dogan, PhD candidate at MIT CSAIL. “We do this by leveraging a material’s micron-level surface structure, which is a unique characteristic even when visually similar to another type. Without that, you’d likely have to make an educated guess on the correct material name from a large database.” Beyond using cameras, sticker tags (like QR codes) have also been used on individual sheets to identify them. Which seems straightforward, however, during laser cutting, if the code is cut off from the main sheet, it can’t be identified for future uses. Also, if an incorrect tag is attached, the laser cutter will assume the wrong material type.

To successfully play a round of “what material is this,” the team trained SensiCut’s deep neural network on images of 30 different material types of over 38,000 images, where it could then differentiate between things like acrylic, foamboard, and styrene, and even provide further guidance on power and speed settings.

In one experiment, the team decided to build a face shield, which would require distinguishing between transparent materials from a workshop. The user would first select a design file in the interface, and then use the “pinpoint” function to get the laser moving to identify the material type at a point on the sheet. The laser interacts with the very tiny features of the surface and the rays are reflected off it, arriving at the pixels of the image sensor and producing a unique 2-D image. The system could then alert or flag the user that their sheet is polycarbonate, which means potentially highly toxic flames if cut by a laser.

The speckle imaging technique was used inside a laser cutter, with low-cost, off-the shelf-components, like a Raspberry Pi Zero microprocessor board. To make it compact, the team designed and 3-D printed a lightweight mechanical housing.

Beyond laser cutters, the team envisions a future where SensiCut’s sensing technology could eventually be integrated into other fabrication tools like 3-D printers. To capture additional nuances, they also plan to extend the system by adding thickness detection, a pertinent variable in material makeup.

Dogan wrote the paper alongside undergraduate researchers Steven Acevedo Colon and Varnika Sinha in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Associate Professor Kaan Akşit of University College London, and MIT Professor Stefanie Mueller.

Athader and Leveltek sign a strategic agreement for the supply of Cut to Length lines with Stretch levelling

Athader has signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the US company Leveltek International for the worldwide supply of stretch leveling Cut to length lines after being awarded a contract by a well-known European service center for a line of this type. This will be the third installation of this type that ATHADER-LEVELTEK-BRADBURY install in the world.Get more news about coil leveling,you can vist our website!

All these improvements result in an increase of the production close to 50 percent compared to Stretch cut to length lines with Start-Stop shear.

The cost of implanting these lines is substantially reduced due to the flying shear and the construction of the stretching module, since no special pits or foundations are required. For this reason, ATHADER-LEVELTEK also offer revamping of Cut to length lines in which roller levelers are replaced by stretched levelers.
Leveltek International designs, manufactures and installs stretch leveling systems for retrofit and new light to heavy gauge cut-to-length and coil-to-coil lines. The company is headquartered in Benwood, WV, about 60 miles (100 km) southwest of Pittsburgh. Since 1993 they have supplied stretch flattening equipment at coil processing facilities for ferrous and non-ferrous materials worldwide.

The agreement will strengthen the presence of both companies in projects with requirements for flattening by stretching both new lines and modernization of existing lines.