Being a fabricator is not an easy job. One of the hardest tasks you might have is to maintain the efficiency of your laser cut machine. And you can do so by following adequate steps to improve the flow of laser-cut parts through a fabrication shop. Using quality parts like Bystronic laser parts, Mazak laser parts will benefit you for a streamlined flow. Here is how you can speed up your laser production by maintaining the flow of laser cut parts.

1. Shop Layout

From all the areas of concern, it is most important that the layout you are working is efficient. Your shop’s layout can make or break even the most versatile production plan. A point to note is that the more time your parts spend in transit or waiting for delivery, your overall efficiency will reduce and can affect the production and overall the plant.

In the ideal scenario, the incoming material should load directly into or nearby the main machinery and all the secondary operations should happen near the laser output area. You must be wondering this is such an obvious thing. But sometimes fabricators do not pay much attention to the layout while installing the laser machine. To overcome this layout mistake, usually, fabricators or owners use a patchwork approach. And when a patchwork approach to shop is inefficient, the entire shop layout would need a redesign.

Any layout’s basic objective is ensuring the smooth flow of work, material, parts, and information through a system. When you understand the overall flow of the shop, it can help the material move efficiently.

1. Proper Maintenance

It is important to consider that maintenance is an equally important part when it comes to laser machinery. To be honest, some fabricators don’t pay much attention to the maintenance of their parts. Unless they experience some problems in the speed or accuracy, they will not feel obligated to maintain their lasers or their quality Amada parts.

It is important to stay on top of the recommended maintenance activities. Because once a problem occurs, the equipment operator won’t be that much more productive. You don’t have to pay much attention because today’s manufactured lasers come with enhanced options that make it easier to practice healthy maintenance. You can schedule and set a regime that allows you to stay on top of your maintenance schedule.

1. Programming

It becomes crucial to program automated material and part handling, majorly for maintaining efficiency. In the production industry, it has become a necessity to have automation. It yields double or triple results. A shop that upholds a manual sheet can vastly have different outputs than a shop that has a completely automated system.

To help avoid downtime, it is necessary to optimize your plant layout, maintaining your equipment on a schedule, programming, and automation, monitoring your production.

In the past years, program software developers used such algorithms that homed parts with as little waste as possible. This saves you more money which means more money left in the pocket of the manufacturer. It is important to maintain integrity in laser nests while unloading them automatically so that they can render at various locations. It is true in cases where high-capacity carts are in use. Because a stack of cut sheets can become a tangle of parts and scrap.

1. Automation

Technology never stops providing better tools for increased efficiency in the workflow. After optimizing your shop layout, performing maintenance and programming, it is important to set out to stride toward laser automation.

If you can operate your industrial laser with 50 percent efficiency then it is pretty much good! The most common beam-on times for an average mix of materials have hovered between 30 and 40 percent historically. But your laser could be capable of more than that. If you add a very basic load and unload automation system, it can increase your beam-on time to more than 80 percent.

If you use standard cart unloading, it might create denoting bottlenecks which can delay the arrival of parts downstream. Conveyors are popular as they allow denesting to occur at the same rate as production. It enables you to react more quickly to production issues. It gives you more time to downstream operations.

1. Monitoring the Production

To make some revolutionary improvements to your laser-cut-part flow, it is important to understand and track all the jobs. When you get statistics like beam-on-time, transit delays, maintenance schedules, and process bottlenecks, it can help you in achieving continuous improvement.

There some laser cutting equipment that comes with a production monitoring option. When there are robust production monitoring and support system intact, you can design and provide transparency to your machine process anytime. it will enable you to achieve real-time access to an extensive amount of data through your desktop or mobile device. To find quality laser parts you can go for Bystronic laser parts and Mazak laser parts for the quality outputs.

Laser cutting, as you all know has become the to go process to cutting due to the convenience, ease, and quality of output it provides. As soon as the manufacturers embraced this form laser cutting, different types of laser cutting technologies followed. Plasma cutting, CO2 Laser cutting, Fiber laser cutting became some of the widely used metal cutting techniques.

For a long time now, fiber laser cutting machines have earned quite a lot of reputation due to the number of benefits they provide. They’ve proved to be better as compared to Co2 laser machines that ask for a lot of maintenance. The costs spent behind lasing gases, beam delivery bellows, and mirrors have also died down. Not just that, the overall productivity speeds have also gone up.

There are times when you might have to invest into Mazak or Bystronic Laser Parts for your fiber lasers but the chances are much less with the kind of outputs they provide. So, what are the other benefits that Fiber lasers can provide you with? Let’s find out:

Offer Enhanced Consistency

The operators of fiber lasers are always raving about the kind of consistency that Fiber lasers offer. The best part about them is that one hardly needs to adjust the parameters and there is also a difference in material quality. As fiber doesn’t need short term degradation like mirror-based optics of CO2, operator doesn’t need to make many adjustments for maintaining the edge quality.

Also, there is no beam alignment needed as all the parameters remain consistent for long time. Whenever you need to undertake a cutting task, all you need to do is turn the system on and it starts working immediately. No need to wait for the laser to produce vacuum, warm up the optics or cycle the gases. So, make the most out of laser’s working as quickly as you switch the lights on and off.

No Maintenance Needed

Although fiber laser doesn’t use mirrors for beam delivery or generation purposes, the machine availability time has substituted the time that goes into re-aligning, cleaning, or replacing optics. Also, one doesn’t need beam delivery systems like bellow systems as one doesn’t have to spend time on replacing or checking these systems.

Furthermore, you do not need to make nozzle alignments as they come with a fixed focal length and cutting head. There’s also no need to changing filter or vacuum pump as fiber laser doesn’t have these components. As you can eliminate the above given maintenance tasks, fiber laser offers more machine availability for production time.

Cut Reflective Metals with Ease

With traditional lasers, reflective materials are always an issue. At times, laser bounces off the reflective material and does a lot of damage to the laser cutting machine. Hence, when it comes to cutting metals like copper, brass and aluminium, Fiber Optic Cables become the first and the most preferred choice.

When it comes to Fiber lasers, it is better not to undermine its features and forget its benefits. This is because the technology is not just cost-effective and faster to operate but also asks for less maintenance by offering more productivity and availability. You can easily find Mazak laser parts for your Fiber lasers as and when you want. And just like every spare part of the laser, they are sure to provide the value for money.

We hope that the above given points provided you with enough insights on the benefits of Fiber lasers. However, it is always advisable to conduct R&D and know about the machinery in detail before you invest into it. Buy from the best!

Originally Posted Here : https://www.sooperarticles.com/automotive-articles/benefits-fiber-lasers-you-were-unaware-1693860.html