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New Equipment & New Services
As a part of our continued support to new and existing customers, we have recently added a new Epilog Model 8000 35 watt Co2 Laser system to our inventory of equipment to assist in prototyping and small lot production of parts from plastic, films, card stock, gasket materials, adhesive backed sheets and more.
For those of you who are not familiar with laser cutting or engraving, it’s a really clean way to use an invisible laser beam to melt and vaporize a very precise amount of material and to control where that beam moves with the equivalent of a 2 axis CNC motion. In this case, the work piece lays flat and the laser beam is transmitted via mirrors to a moving X-Y head and then directed to the part to be cut. There are some limitations to the exact types of materials that can be used, but in general it will slice and dice some of the neatest looking patterns that you can design.
The data file that you provide can be processed from a variety of file types (i.e. DXF / DWG / Corel / Adobe Illustrator / AutoCad, Microsoft Word and others) – The quality of the end product can often depend on specific settings that will affect the output file so a little more conversation during the first exchange is not uncommon. The file size of your patterns or artwork can be up to 64 mb and beyond with a file buffering capability.
The working area is 12” x 24” in X-Y and up to 8” in the Z-axis to place or hold the work piece. The typical cutting depth for most materials is between .010 and .375 depending on the specific material and the quality of cut edge you want to obtain. We also have the ability to engrave on round objects with a rotary axis. Both X-Y and rotary work can be done by a “raster scanning” motion or a “vector cut” path (single line path) at a resolution of 75 to 1200 dpi.
The easiest way to think of this is that the single beam of light focused on the part is about .004” diameter, so if you draw a four sided box, the path will cut right on that center line and you will probably have a hard time threading a human hair thru the gap! Multiple or repeat patterns can be banked or incremented for very efficient cuts and high output in a low amount of time.
The typical question is “what can I cut and how accurate is it….” Everyone likes to try some new materials and we’re always interested to discuss your project but there are a couple of basic material types that we will not cut. Anything with PVC or vinyl (Polyvinylchloride) or carbon based materials are out of the question due to the vapors created during the cutting that will immediately etch the mirrors in the system.
The accuracy is end product is dependent on the part file accuracy plus a small allowance for beam width offset. Understanding what you want to obtain prior to setting up the files is critical to know how to accommodate the processing to get the best results. Holding a tolerance of +/- .003” to .005” is possible in most cases (depending on material types.) The laser uses high speed, continuous loop, DC servomotors and linear encoding for very precise positioning of the beam.
Give us a call to discuss your next project and to find out how our Laser System can be productive for you. It’s just a beam of light, but it’s impressive to see what it can do!
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