Fiber laser cutting machines are very popular for metal cutting projects. A few years ago, only a few large metal cutting plants used fiber laser cutters because they were very expensive to purchase initially. However, with the reduction of the cost of laser cutting machines, some small factories have also begun to choose fiber laser cutting machines to replace traditional metal cutting equipment. In addition, the running cost of fiber laser cutting machine is the lowest.

 

The running cost of the fiber laser cutting machine is very low, and its basic consumables mainly include the following parts:

 

All machines require power to operate. The total power cost of a laser cutting machine consists of three parts: laser source, chiller and servo motor. Let's take a 1000W fiber laser cutting machine as an example.

The photoelectric conversion rate of the fiber laser is 25%, the highest of any laser machine. The cost of a 1000W laser source is 4000W/h. The chiller of the 1000W fiber laser machine needs to use 3000W/h. The total demand for servo motors and machine tool components is about 4000W/h. Therefore, if a 1000W laser machine runs at full power, its power consumption is about 11000W/h.

In fact, since not all components of a fiber laser cutter are always running, the actual cost only uses 60% of the total machine power. In this case, its actual cost is about 6600KW/h. However, the power consumption of a 1000W CO2 laser cutting machine will be several times that of a fiber laser cutting machine. From the long-term operation of the machine, the fiber laser cutting machine is more cost-effective.

 

Usually we use O2 when cutting carbon steel with fiber laser cutters and N2 in cutting other materials such as stainless steel, aluminum and brass.

For example, when cutting 1mm stainless steel, about 12kg/h of N2 is required. When cutting 5mm carbon steel, it takes about 9kg/h.

 

The wearing parts of the fiber laser cutting machine are all located on the laser cutting head, including the protective mirror, focusing mirror, nozzle and ceramic ring. The life of the protective mirror and nozzle is about 1 month/piece. The service life of the focusing lens is about 3 months/piece. The service life of the ceramic ring is about 1 year. The specific service life of these components will vary depending on how and how often they are used.

 

In addition to the above components, the fiber laser cutting machine requires almost no other consumables. Compared with traditional metal cutting equipment, its operating cost is very low. Therefore, more and more users choose to buy fiber laser cutting machines for metal project production.