Materials
There are no standard material towers with a laser tube cutting machine. Bundle loaders, the most efficient of the tube material handling options, feed one tube at a time from the bundle into the tube laser via a singularizing system. This type of feeding mechanism doesn’t work with open profiles, such as angles or channels, because they interlock while in a bundle and don’t come free easily. For open profiles, step loaders are used, which sequence a section one at a time into the machine while keeping the correct orientation of that section.
Fiber lasers are nearly maintenance-free and demonstrate superior wall plug efficiency compared to traditional CO2 Laser cutting machines. They can also be used for precise cutting of reflective materials. They are faster than CO2 when cutting certain thicknesses of steel. The speed of cutting tube is relative. Real time savings can be achieved by speeding up processing times for the tube and creating finished parts.