Research on Laser Cutting of Pipe (Part 1)

The laser has three characteristics of good monochromaticity, coherence, and parallelism, so it is particularly suitable for material processing. The traditional domestic pipe cutting methods mainly rely on manual sawing, sawing machine sawing, roller extrusion, grinding wheel cutting, gas welding cutting, etc. These processing methods basically have the disadvantages of low cutting efficiency and high labor intensity of workers, while laser cutting is faster The processing efficiency, good processing effect, and other advantages are widely used in the industrial field.

With the development of science and technology and industry, pipes have been widely used to manufacture parts in aircraft manufacturing, engineering machinery, transportation, petrochemical, agricultural and animal husbandry machinery, and other industrial sectors. In actual production, the pipe has the advantages of low production cost, good processability, lightweight of structural parts, and material saving. Therefore, pipe cutting has a very important position in the industrial field. Due to the different shape, size, and application of the pipe, and the cutting of the pipe is restricted by factors such as processing quality, it is very important to choose reasonable processing equipment, processing methods, and technological measures.

There are many inconveniences in tube cutting, and although domestic traditional cutting methods can also achieve application results, but the processing efficiency is low and the processing effect is poor, so combining tube cutting with laser technology will make the field of tube cutting have a broader development prospect.

Pipe Laser Cutting Machine

Current status and future development of tube laser cutting

Tube laser cutting has many advantages such as narrow cut width, small heat-affected zone, fast cutting speed, good flexibility, clean-cut, and no tool wear. With the emergence and development of CNC laser pipe cutting machines, the development of various processing techniques for spatial freeform surfaces and curves can show its unique side. When laser cutting a pipe, not only does the laser spot move in a certain trajectory relative to the workpiece in three-dimensional space but also requires that during the entire processing process, the laser optical axis is always perpendicular to the processing surface of the pipe to be cut. For a CNC fiber laser cutting head that can perform automatic focusing, its nozzle can automatically track the surface of the workpiece through an automatic measurement and control system. Production practice shows that the key to pipe cutting is to eliminate the cutting quality defects to the greatest extent, so as to meet the processing requirements of the pipe. For the processing of complex pipes, such as perforation, grooving, trimming, or undercutting, laser cutting is not only faster than traditional processing methods but also can greatly guarantee the processing quality.

Overview of pipe laser cutting machine

In the process of processing, first of all, the pipe parts should be cut to obtain the required length of the pipe blank. The traditional domestic pipe cutting methods are difficult to meet the needs of mass production, and the pipe parts processed by these traditional processing methods are generally of poor quality in the cut surface, and some even have processing defects such as deformation and collapse. In addition to cutting pipes, some also require other forms of processing, such as: cutting patterns for decoration and lamps, spiral, sine, cosine cutting, marking, etc. If the traditional processing methods are used for these forms of tube processing, not only the processing efficiency is low, but also it is difficult to meet the ideal processing requirements, and some of them cannot even be processed.