What are the characteristics of steel pipe laser cutting?

What are the characteristics of steel pipe laser cutting?

Cutting or separating steel pipes (welded pipes or seamless pipes) is an important part of forming. Commonly used methods include mechanical cutting, stamping and laser cutting. Laser cutting uses a focused, high-power-density laser beam to irradiate pipes, causing the irradiated material to quickly melt, vaporize, ablate or reach the ignition point. At the same time, the molten material is blown away by the high-speed airflow coaxial with the beam, thereby achieving the cutting of the steel pipe. Laser cutting is one of the thermal cutting methods.

Stainless steel pipes below 4mm can be cut with laser cutting equipment, and carbon steel pipes with a thickness of 20mm can be cut by adding oxygen to the laser beam, but a thin oxide film will form on the cutting surface after cutting with oxygen. The maximum cutting thickness can be increased to 20mm, but the size error of the cutting parts is large.

Features of laser cutting

⑴ Good cutting quality
Due to the small laser spot, high energy density and fast cutting speed, laser cutting can achieve better cutting quality.
① The laser cutting slit is thin and narrow, both sides of the slit are parallel and perpendicular to the surface, and the dimensional accuracy of the cut parts can reach ±0.05mm.
②The cutting surface is smooth and beautiful, and the surface roughness is only tens of microns. Even laser cutting can be used as a final step, so no machining is required and the parts can be used directly.
③After the steel pipe is laser cut, the width of the heat-affected zone is very small, and the performance of the material near the cutting seam is almost unaffected. Moreover, the steel pipe has small deformation, high cutting accuracy, good slit geometry, and a relatively regular rectangular cross-sectional shape.

⑵ High cutting efficiency
Due to the transmission characteristics of laser, laser cutting machines are generally equipped with multiple CNC worktables, and the entire cutting process can be fully CNC. During operation, just by changing the CNC program, it can be suitable for cutting parts of different shapes, and can achieve both two-dimensional and three-dimensional cutting.

⑶ Fast cutting speed
Using a 1200W laser to cut 2mm thick low carbon steel pipes, the cutting speed can reach 600cm/min; to cut 5mm thick polypropylene resin pipes, the cutting speed can reach 1200cm/min. There is no need to clamp and fix the material during laser cutting, which not only saves tooling fixtures, but also saves auxiliary time for loading and unloading.

⑷ Non-contact cutting
There is no contact between the cutting torch and the steel pipe during laser cutting, and there is no tool wear. To process parts of different shapes, there is no need to change the "tool", just change the output parameters of the laser. The laser cutting process has low noise, small vibration and no pollution.

⑸ Various types of cutting materials
There are many types of laser cutting materials, including metals, non-metals, metal-based and non-metal-based composite materials, leather, wood and fibers. However, different materials show different adaptability to laser cutting due to their own thermophysical properties and differences in laser absorption rates.

⑹ Disadvantages
Due to limitations of laser power and equipment volume, laser cutting can only cut plates and pipes of small and medium thickness, and as the thickness of the pipe increases, the cutting speed decreases significantly. The cost of laser cutting equipment is high and the one-time investment is large.

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