Most manufacturers will tell you that cutting intricate shapes in a wide range of metals can prove tricky without the application of quality laser cutting. Laser cutting is paramount for producing bespoke parts and components that do not conform to traditional shapes and sizes on mass.
While many traditional manufacturers and fabricators will find the production of these components tricky at best, the team at SSC are armed with leading laser cutting technology to help our customer’s designs come to life.
Laser cutting is our bread and butter. We manufacture hundreds of components each day using a variety of metal types. However, laser cutting aluminium can offer some unique challenges to any laser cutting subcontractor.
What are the challenges in cutting aluminium?
Reflectiveness: Similar to stainless steel and other polished metals, aluminium is reflective in nature, which can cause the laser beam to be reflected up the nozzle, potentially causing costly damage to the laser cutter.
Sometimes aluminium will come with a coating on the material, meaning that the reflective nature of the metal is hidden underneath. It is not until the cutting as begun and the layer of coating is removed that the real danger of the metal can present, causing damage to the laser cutter.
How can the issues with laser cutting aluminium be averted?
Not every laser cutting subcontractor will be able to bypass the problems when cutting aluminium or other reflective metals. The equipment and machines needed to achieve the end goal can cost a lot of money in capital investment. However, with this in mind, we operate only the best in laser cutting machines and to laser cut aluminium we operate 10kW and 12kW fiber laser cutters.
The 10kW and 12kW fiber machines pass the beam directly through fiber optic cables, through the head with no mirrors. The beam is stabilised, resulting in a cut that does not blowback. It means we can cut aluminium on mass with minimal issues. The increase in power on the 12kW fiber laser even allows us to cut up to 30mm thick on Aluminium.
Fiber lasers are also available in the tube laser cutting market too, allowing us to cut aluminium tube, box, angle, channel and irregular sections. With our Bystronic ByTube Star 130 Tube Laser, we can offer this service to our customers, helping them to produce high quality, precise, laser cut aluminium parts from sections where previously they needed to be sawn and drilled due to CO2 tube lasers not being able to cope with the reflective nature of the material.
Our Laser Cutting Aluminium Service
We are one of the UK’s leading subcontractor of laser cutting services. This means we are perfectly positioned to offer a high-quality service to all of our customers, including the laser cutting of aluminium.
We have the skills, equipment and quality standards to produce bespoke laser cut components in aluminium to a wide range of industries. If you have an upcoming project where you require your components or parts to be laser cut in aluminium contact the team at SSC Laser today and see how the UK’s leading laser cutting subcontractor can help you.
- Call: 01889 270241
- Email: sales@ssclaser.co.uk
