With its excellent performance, laser equipment is increasingly used in various industries. Laser equipment can be divided into: laser cutting machine, laser engraving machine, laser marking machine, laser cleaning machine, laser welding machine, and other laser equipment. Currently there are two types of laser cutting machines for material cutting on the market: fiber laser cutting machines and CO2 laser cutting machines.

 

So how to choose the right laser cutting machine? First of all, you must know the difference between fiber laser cutting machine and CO2 laser cutting machine, in order to make a better choice.

 

Fiber lasers generate laser light through diode pumping, and use fiber optic cables to transmit the laser beam. The CO2 laser generates laser light by exciting nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the cavity, and then transmits the beam through a mirror.

 

The conversion efficiency of CO2 lasers is about 10%, and the conversion efficiency of fiber lasers is about 30%. That is to say, the overall energy consumption of the fiber laser is about 3 times less than that of the CO2 laser, which greatly improves the energy efficiency of the fiber laser cutting machine.

 

The wavelength of the fiber laser is 1.06 μm, and the wavelength of the CO2 laser is 9.3 μm~10.6 μm, so the focusing spot of the fiber laser is smaller than that of the CO2 laser, the cutting speed is faster, and the processing efficiency is higher.

 

Although fiber laser cutting machine has so many advantages, CO2 laser cutting machine also has its professional application field.

 

Different cutting materials have different laser absorption rates for different wavelengths. Some non-metallic materials such as wood, cloth, acrylic, leather, glass, etc. have very low absorption rates for fiber lasers. Therefore, if your workshop only needs to cut non-metallic materials, CO2 Laser cutting machine is the best choice, and fiber laser cutting machine is professionally used for cutting metal sheets and metal pipes.

 

The CO2 laser cutting machine can also cut metal materials, but it can only cut stainless steel and carbon steel, and cannot cut highly reflective materials such as brass and aluminum. Fiber laser cutting machine can cut various types of metal materials, and because the beam of fiber laser cutting machine is more concentrated and the spot is smaller, when cutting metal plates of the same thickness, the cutting speed is faster and the quality of the workpiece is higher.

 

In terms of machine maintenance, fiber laser cutting machines are simpler and more convenient, and CO2 laser cutting machines require regular maintenance. The CO2 laser cutting machine needs CO2 as the laser gas. Due to the purity of the CO2 gas, the resonator may cause pollution, so it needs to be cleaned regularly, and the mirror of the CO2 laser machine also needs to be maintained and calibrated. Therefore, if your workshop mainly processes metal materials, then the fiber laser cutting machine can save costs and improve efficiency.

 

Although the fiber laser cutting machine needs to invest more money in the purchase, in the long run, the fiber cutting still occupies a higher advantage, and the economic benefits brought by the fiber metal cutting machine are much higher than that of the CO2 laser machine. In the future development trend, fiber laser cutting machine will become the mainstream equipment in the metal manufacturing industry.