Hey CD,
Our team was looking at purchasing a CNC laser for FRC use. Any suggestions? Our main goal is to cut plastic and aluminum up to about .375" thick.
Thanks,
-RC
What is your budget?
What size sheets do you want to cut?
What electrical power is available in your shop?
Does it have to be a laser?
Plastic and aluminum? That will be very expensive to buy one which does both.
My college recently bought a 60 Watt laser cutter for upwards of $15k, and it could barely cut .250 Delrin or .375 acrylic. Don’t even think of being able to cut aluminum, it has a hard enough time just engraving color anodized aluminum. Unless you want to shell out massive amounts of money, most institutional-grade laser cutters are designed for large amounts of prototyping, primarily with acrylic.
You really need to decide what the machine’s capabilities must be, and then select a design.
Just like building a FRC robot.
Once you know what capabilities you need, contact a manufacturer and let THEM help you determine what machine you need to fulfill those requirements. They can also help you make intelligent choices when you need to compromise - once you see the prices, you’ll understand what I mean.
Clearly I have no clue about how expensive lasers are. Art, we have a router that can currently cut plastic very easily. I really just wanna cut aluminum. What is the price to thickness ratio for laser’s that can cut aluminum?
Any recommended models or manufacturers to look at?
Thanks,
-RC
Other than working with our small campus laser cutter/engraver, I haven’t really done any work on/with higher wattage laser cutting machines. However, most of the laser cutting machines designed to cut metal (1000+ Watts) are designed for sheet metal shops in mind. Thus they are physically huge, as they are designed around accommodating 4’x8’ sheets of metal. I don’t know of any “intermediate” laser cutters between the primarily-plastic prototyping laser cutters and the huge industrial laser cutters.
A quick eBay search found a used one (69,039 hours, or in other words almost eight full years if it ran 24/7/365) for less than $20k, but at 16,660 pounds this isn’t something that can be easily moved into a school environment.
I am by no means an expert however I believe a laser capable of aluminum in any measurable thickness would be over $100,000 and probably even closer to $150,000. Lasers really don’t do well with aluminum even extremely powerful ones with anything thicker than about 1/4"
You could look into a hi-def plasma which would be a great deal cheaper (~50-75k) and still perform well or maybe just forget the idea altogether and get a production mill.
While Im thinking about it I bet you could get a smaller waterjet for much less than a laser. Check out Omax machines
If you already have a CNC router that can cut plastic you could consider getting a plasma torch to cut the aluminum (you will have to switch back and forth). Sure it’s not as clean as a laser, but it would probably work with your existing equipment and would be a fraction of the cost, effort, and space of getting a whole new machine. Heck, you wouldn’t have to learn how to program a new machine either.
I would look a Hypertherm Powermax45 or Powermax1000, for ~$1600 or ~$2200 respectively. There will be other costs associated with setting each of these machines up on your CNC table, but I do not think you will be able to implement a laser cutter of similar capacity for even close to this amount of money.
a 5x5 waterjet is around $100-150k last I checked, depending on options
I should add that the vo-tech center at my old HS built a workable CNC plasma cutter (5’x9’ IIRC) with a donated torch and power supply for about $4500 including a computer and software. It was a very fun project (I designed and machined the stepper motor transmissions) and the machine still works great 5 years later.
Edit: Found this article from Torchmate: http://www.plasma-cutter.com/comparison.htm it compares plasma, hi-def plasma, and laser.