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Technology Spotlight: “Democratized” fiber laser lowers ownership entry point

Cuts sheet and tube, plugs into 110-V outlet (Video enhanced)

Bigger than a breadbox, smaller than Boudin Bakery. The new FabLight fiber laser cutting machine has a small footprint and a similarly sized price point. Originally intended for educational outlets, the machine also is gaining entry into fab shops.

So you want to dip your toe in the laser cutting machine pool but don’t want to invest $1 million or so to do so … maybe $60,000. You want a laser that cuts both sheet metal and tube. You don’t have a lot of space for it, so it needs to be compact. And, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if it were easy to move, cut on shop air, didn’t need a chiller, and plugged into your 110-V wall outlet, plug ‘n’ play?

Say hello to FabLight, manufactured by 3D Fab Light and launched at FABTECH® 2016.

The fiber laser machine’s footprint is 21 square feet (40 inch by 74 in.) with a drawer below the cutting head that holds and loads the material. It’s on wheels. It plugs into a 110-V wall outlet (see Figure 1). The laser is air-cooled so it doesn’t need a chiller. It can use regular compressed shop air, as well as nitrogen, oxygen, and argon. It uses a HEPA filter vacuum to clear out small particles, rather than complex external ventilation and ductwork. Because it is a fiber laser, it has no moving parts, lamps, or mirrors.

“You roll it in, screw the feet down, and it’s level relative to itself, so there’s no real advanced preparation. You plug it into a 110-V wall outlet and you’re cutting up to 3/16-in. steel,” said Joel Rosenberg, 3D Fab Light’s self-described “ambiguous VP” (see Figure 2). (View a video of Joel here.) “We call it a ‘no-installation installation.’”

A Laser in Every Shop

3D Fab Light’s line of economical fiber laser cutting machines—in power levels of 1,500 W,

3,000 W, and 4,500 W pulsed—is what happens when an industrialist, a MacArthur grant fellow and inventor, and a techie marketing dude get together to co-found a company in San Francisco under the Otherlab umbrella.

3D Fab Light’s genesis began many years ago, Rosenberg relayed. CEO Matthew Bye founded Beam Dynamics, a CO2 industrial laser cutting machine manufacturer, later purchased by Coherent in 2010. (View a video of Matthew Bye here.) “Shortly after that, Saul Griffith, a MacArthur genius [fellow] who founded Otherlab, and Matthew, whom he had gotten to know when he bought a laser from Coherent, started talking. ‘What would it take to do a laser cutter, especially as fiber lasers were coming up?’ So in 2013 we wrote a proposal to DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.]”

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) wanted to teach military recruits how to use advanced manufacturing for quicker prototyping and faster repairs, Rosenberg said. “Essentially, they wanted to turn recruits into MacGyver.

“So we started building this machine, trying to bend the cost curve,” he continued. The use case was that it be small enough to fit into a shipping container that the DOD could deploy to the field and that it run on a 20-amp wall outlet. “It is a little crazy,” Rosenberg said with a laugh. “This 110-V outlet is adequate for powering the laser—even up to the 4,500-W pulsed model—because fiber lasers are energy-efficient. The machine draws about the same power as a hair dryer,” he said.

The unusual emphasis on engineering to reduce the sale price of the machine is the manifestation of Otherlab’s manifesto for the “democratization” of advanced tooling to lower the cost of manufacturing, said Bye. “The thinking was to design this machine around an expensive but decreasing-cost laser so that we would be able to get more people access to it,” he said. “The difference between a $100,000 and a $5 million investment is sizable, particularly for the small to medium-sized companies.”

Precision Cuts

It would be a mistake to draw a correlation between the machines’ low price entry points and the cut quality they can achieve (see Figure 3). The fiber laser is an IPG. It cuts parts small and large, with precision you might not expect.“We’re trying to get you perfect parts. That’s our goal,” Rosenberg said.

Figure 1
A standard 110-V outlet is adequate to power all three FabLight models.

The machines cut material as thin as 0.004 in. and as thick as 3/16 in. “Different laser powers determine how thick we can go. We’re comfortably going up to 0.080 in. on the lower-end model, 1/8 in. on the midrange model, and 3/16 in. at the high end,” Rosenberg said.

The company is still testing the laser machines’ capabilities. Can they cut very hard material? “The answer is, I don’t know yet. We are exploring as many materials as we can. So if people have materials they want us to test, we’ll try it,” Rosenberg said.

The three FabLight laser cutting machine models cut and engrave sheets up to 25 by 50 in. They cut and engrave tube up to 2 in. square and 3 in. diameter round, up to 50 in. long. (An upgrade will accommodate a 10-ft.-long tube.)

They are equipped with between 1,500 and 4,500 W of pulsed power, driven by servomotors, and a heavy-duty motion controller.

A tracking sensor in the cutting head maintains the optimal cut distance.

Fabricators can cut using industry-standard DXF files—either directly on 2-D sheet or by wrapping them around 3-D tubes—with minimal training, the company states.

In Place

3D Fab Light has completed three installations as part of the DARPA grant, two at military sites and one at Otherlab itself. They have a number of early sales that are “in the build,” and that represent all of their target markets— job shops, production manufacturers, and academic and R&D groups.

When the company launched the machine line at FABTECH, the initial reaction was great, Rosenberg said. One attendee said, “Terrific.” Another, “Game-changing.” Yet another said the test parts were 10 times better than he was currently getting. Others were disbelieving. “Are you for real?”

“Some people were skeptical, and asked, ‘Is it a piece of crap?’ No, it’s a real machine, completely made in the USA. All manufactured parts are made here in the Bay Area and they’re assembled and tested near the San Francisco Airport,” Rosenberg said.

The partners know where their machine line’s niche is. “It’s not a 5-kW continuous-wave, 1/2 -in., 1-in.-thick cutter. It’s designed mostly for sheet metal, 2-in. square tubes, and 3-in. round tube,” Rosenberg said.

Figure 2
3D FabLight’s founders, Joel Rosenberg, Matthew Bye, and Saul Griffith (left to right,) sourced the San Francisco Bay Area technology disruption aura in designing and building a fiber laser cutting machine that would not be cost-prohibitive, making it accessible to all.

They hope that word will get out that this is a real machine that does what people need it to do. “The fact that the fiber laser is an IPG and that Matthew has a lot of experience in the industrial space helps our credibility, I think. We are a new company building a new product that’s more affordable,” Rosenberg said.

Could the FabLight become the Bridgeport of the modern fab shop?

3D Fab Light, 415-870-3335, http://3dfablight.com

Figure 3
The machine precisely laser-cuts 0.004-to 3/16-in.-thick sheet and tube.

About the Author

Kate Bachman

Contributing editor

815-381-1302

Kate Bachman is a contributing editor for The FABRICATOR editor. Bachman has more than 20 years of experience as a writer and editor in the manufacturing and other industries.