High-powered lasers help fabricators keep up

Attendees at a Bystronic customer event at the company’s headquarters in Hoffman Estates, Ill., have a conversation about the ByStar Fiber 3015 15-kW laser cutting machine. This was one of the first in-person events that Bystronic has hosted since the state of Illinois rolled back its pandemic guidelines.

Two unique things happened on Wednesday, July 14, in Hoffman Estates, Ill., at the Bystronic U.S. headquarters: Metal fabricators gathered for an in-person event without masks and concern for social distancing, and they got to see a 15-kW laser cutting machine in action.

But while the world continues its slow emergence from pandemic routines, it’s not right to call things “normal”—at least from a metal fabricating perspective. Metal prices are at an all-time high, and even reports of hoarding are emerging as fab shops and manufacturers look to grab as much material as they can now because of fear of further price escalation. Companies continue to struggle to find workers interested in manufacturing work, and that pool is growing smaller as other industries face their own critical shortages. Meanwhile, the manufacturing economy is heating up, and metal fabricators are worried about how they might keep up with the opportunities.

At Bystronic’s “High-performance Event,” Mark Johnson, president of Fabricating Solutions, the local Bystronic dealer that helped to organize the event, posed a question to metal fabricator attendees: “How do you produce more parts per day without expanding your building or hiring labor?” Considering that adding on to a building is expensive and time-consuming and finding the right employees difficult, Johnson suggested that advanced fabricating technology could help.

He offered up the following examples:

• A 15-kW laser cutting machine can do the work of three to five 2-kW laser cutting machines, which means a company can consolidate laser operations and reduce the number of machine operators needed. Obviously, if laser cutting operations run multiple shifts, a fab shop can see quite a savings in labor costs.
• Parts-sorting technology eliminates the need for fab shops to find entry-level workers who might be needed to pick parts out of skeleton produced during a lights-out shift. Some metal fabricators worry about the return on investment with a parts-sorting system, but Johnson said, “If you can’t find labor, payback is immediate.”
• Offline programming takes the task off the shop floor and allows press brake operators to focus on making parts.
• Robotic bending cells remove the press brake operator altogether and deliver production levels that a human simply can’t match on high-volume jobs.

“People understand this. They are coming out of the woodwork saying that we need some sort of automation,” Johnson said.

The 15-kW ByStar Fiber 3015 laser cutting machine proved to be an item of interest for visiting metal fabricators, who are beginning to understand what the high-powered machine tool can mean for production efficiency. In a video shared with attendees, a 3/8-in. stainless steel sample part was cut with 12-, 10-, and 6-kW fiber laser cutting machines. The 12-kW machine finished the job in 31 sec., the 10-kW in 39 sec., and the 6-kW in 78 sec.

As fiber cutting has become more accepted in metal fabricating, fabricators have learned to live with two new realities: a huge increase in using nitrogen as an assist gas and more dross issues, particularly in a soft metal like aluminum. Bob Berkshire, a Bystronic regional sales manager, said new gas mixes of nitrogen and oxygen are helping metal fabricators on both of these fronts. Obviously, if a metal fabricator can use one of these mixes, the amount of nitrogen consumed as an assist gas is reduced. Also, the mixed gases produce less dross, which reduces the need for grinding and deburring in downstream operations.

To illustrate what these gas mixes can mean for fiber laser cutting, Berkshire share a slide of 0.375-in. mild steel cut with a ByStar 3015 fiber laser. Using oxygen as the original assist gas, the feed rate for the cutting job was 90 IPM; with the gas mix of 97% nitrogen and 3% oxygen, the feed rate was 110 IPM. Additionally, the plate cut with the gas mix had better edge quality.

Berkshire added that the cut edge does oxidize slightly, but it doesn’t prevent paint or powder coatings from adhering to that edge in most applications. Typically, a fully oxidized edge, created when laser cutting with oxygen, is not a suitable surface for any type of top-coat finish.

Bystronic will be exhibiting its 15-kW laser cutting machine and other equipment at FABTECH Sept. 13-16 in booth A2126.