Laser cutting steel. Need experienced advise.

[danielm]

The material is 9310 and 4340. Annealed. About 1.2" thick X 24" long X 2" wide. The profile that is cut will be finish machined and I'd like to see something like .010" excess after being lased.

 

What kind of accuracy can I expect compared to water jet? Are there any negative affects to the steel from the laser? If so, how deep does the affected area go?

 

What kind of price should I expect to pay?

[mkd]

$1 million. make check payable to me.

 

.50" thick steel takes a 4000 watt laser, roughly. i would advise against it with this thickness.

 

better off with waterjet or EDM.

[mkd]

EDM would have awesome accuracy for a gear rack, assuming enough finish passes were incorporated to account for releasing that much material / stress.

[koko76]

The material is 9310 and 4340. Annealed. About 1.2" thick X 24" long X 2" wide. The profile that is cut will be finish machined and I'd like to see something like .010" excess after being lased.

 

What kind of accuracy can I expect compared to water jet? Are there any negative affects to the steel from the laser? If so, how deep does the affected area go?

 

What kind of price should I expect to pay?

 

Not going to reasonably happen. 4340 is going to harden like hell at the cut in the case of laser. Assuming you could find someone with a powerful enough machine, I'd guess that the HAZ would be pretty deep. I don't know of any 5 axis machines is the power range that would be needed, so you'd have a "significant" draft, holding .010 off finish won't happen over the entire face. We have issue here with ~.08-.104 4340 getting hard enough to rip the threads off a tap when they insist on lasering the holes. The poor edge finish beats up carbide if you try to use that to clean it out. It's not something I would start with if I wanted to wind up with nice gear teeth.

Your options are pretty much tilting head waterjet, Wire EDM, or just machine from barstock if available.

[danielm]

$1 million. make check payable to me.

 

.50" thick steel takes a 4000 watt laser, roughly. i would advise against it with this thickness.

 

better off with waterjet or EDM.

 

 

Well, I'm obviously in the wrong business....

 

We had some samples sent out for waterjet and what we got was less than desireable...but we may be stuck with it.

[mkd]

less than desireable...but we may be stuck with it.

experience only comes with time, grasshopper.

now you know what to expect for the future.

 

hard for us to say good or bad since we don't know the specific application or tolerance required.

sounds like EDM would be the #1 choice. i would guess EDM quotes would be at least 4 times the cost of waterjet because it is slow.

[GoetzInd]

Whats the root radius of those teeth? Id' be making that thing into chips with a variable helix and a dynamic core path.

 

Mike

[GoetzInd]

Ok I ras2vec'd your picture and scaled it to you overall dims and I came up with 21min to rough w/ 1/2in 1.5 loc 5flt dynamic core and another 12min dynamic rest w/ 7/16 5flt. that would leave you w/.01 on profile to do whatever finishing youre doing now.

 

Mike

[danielm]

Ok I ras2vec'd your picture and scaled it to you overall dims and I came up with 21min to rough w/ 1/2in 1.5 loc 5flt dynamic core and another 12min dynamic rest w/ 7/16 5flt. that would leave you w/.01 on profile to do whatever finishing youre doing now.

 

Mike

 

 

Holy cow Mike! You're a problem solving machine! Can you email me that MCX-6 file? [email protected]

[GoetzInd]

Holy cow Mike! You're a problem solving machine! Can you email me that MCX-6 file? [email protected]

 

Actually I already deleted it but it was pretty ugly anyway off a jpeg. I you can shoot me over the file or even just the profile I can put some toolpaths on it. Reply to my email if thats good.

 

Mike

[danielm]

Actually I already deleted it but it was pretty ugly anyway off a jpeg. I you can shoot me over the file or even just the profile I can put some toolpaths on it. Reply to my email if thats good.

 

Mike

 

You got mail....

[GoetzInd]

Files Away!