Frequently Asked Questions

Fiber lasers are everywhere in the modern world. Due to the different wavelengths they can generate, they are widely used in industrial environments to perform cutting, marking, welding, cleaning, texturing, drilling and a lot more. They are also used in other fields such as telecommunication and medicine.

Fiber lasers use an optical fiber cable made of silica glass to guide light. The resulting laser beam is more precise than with other types of lasers because it is straighter and smaller. They also have a small footprint, good electrical efficiency, low maintenance and low operating costs.

Fiber lasers aren't the only type of laser on the market, and in fact they aren't the most common either. You'll find that gas lasers, which most often use carbon dioxide or helium-neon as their medium, are actually the most common; mainly as they have been around much longer than Fiber Lasers.

All laser processes come with their upsides and downsides, but it seems that the benefits of fiber lasers far outweighs that of any of the other processes. It's the newest of the laser processes, only really picking up a lot of traction in the last couple of decades or so.

But the benefits that it provides, which we'll come on to below, have been quickly realised by those all over the globe. Fiber lasers are now used as standard in dozens of industries around the world, and they now help to create the phones that we use every day, the transport that gets us around, and the medical care that we rely on so often.

That's probably one of the biggest advantages to fiber lasers that makes them so attractive; the fact that they can so easily and seamlessly adapt between industries for a huge range of applications.

Laser cutting is a process where a material is cut through the use of a laser beam. This can be for small & fine materials or materials with a much greater level of thickness (e.g. metal sheets). The process simply involves the use of a focused laser beam (e.g. pulsed or continuous wave) to cut a wide range of materials to a high level of accuracy, using a process, which is highly repeatable.

The laser beam can easily be programmed to precision cut a diverse range of thicknesses and materials (e.g. metals (including reflective metals such as copper, silver and aluminium) – brass, tungsten, steel, pewter and titanium etc.), gemstones (e.g. diamonds), ceramics, graphic composites, silicon and many types of plastics.

Even the most complex, awkward and intricate of shapes can be accurately cut through a Fiber Laser as the user has total control over the beam intensity, duration and heat input. Laser cutting has some similarities to other laser-based processes such as engraving and drilling, which also use a focused laser beam to effectively make designed cuts into a material.

Faster Processing – with instant Laser turn on, high modulation or pulse repitition rates, ability to vary pulse power, energy pulse, width and modulation rates on-the-fly, Fiber Lasers deliver faster processing across a wide range of materials and applications.

Reduced energy bills – Fiber Lasers are up to ten times more energy efficient than traditional YAG or CO2 Laser systems. Consuming little or no energy when not active, their annual energy savings can even attract government grant funded energy efficiency programs.

Greater Reliability – Fiber Lasers have no optics to adjust or align, and no lamps to replace. Maintenance is minimal and so utilisation and up-times are maximised. The Lasers are designed as shop floor industrial tools.

Small manufacturing footprint – Our Lasers can be air or water cooled and with the largest units only 5U high in a rack mount format they take little space within the machine system of which they are part. Multiple deployments of Fiber Laser based machines can show a significant improvement on factory productivity per meter square.

Higher productivity – Lower operational costs and smaller footprints all combine to ensure a compelling return on investment. Single unit, multiple application pulsed and CW Lasers can process across a wide variety of applications and materials, metals and non-metals: spilasers.com/applications shows typical and innovative applications enabled by Fiber Lasers

Electric Power - Electric power is necessary for all machine. Laser cutting machine's electric power cost total include three parts, include laser source, water chillier and servo motor.1000W laser cutting machine for reference fiber laser's photoelectric conversion is 25%, which is the highest in all laser machine. One set 1kw laser source will cost 4kw/h. 1000w fiber laser machine's water chillier need use 3kw/h. Servo motor and machine bed parts total need about 4kw/h. So if one 1kw laser machine running in full power its electric power cost is about 11kw/h. actually one machine's real cost only use 60% power as these parts is not running always. In this case, it's real cost is about 6.6kw/h. But one set 1000w co2 laser cutting machine's power cost will be several times.

Auxiliary Gas - Usually we use Compressed Air but depending on the application & finish O2 gas is used when cutting mild steel and N2 gas for other material, such as stainless steel, aluminium and brass. For example, when we cut 1mm stainless steel, it need about 12kg/hour N2. When we cut 5mm mild steel, it need about 9kg/hour.

Quick wear parts - Fiber laser cutting machine's quick wear parts all on laser cutting machine, include protective lens, focus lens, nozzle and ceramic ring. Protective lens and nozzle's lifetime is about 1 month/piece. Focus lens's lifetime is about 3 months/piece. Ceramic ring's lifetime is about 1 year or more.

Except above parts, fiber laser cutting machine nearly have no other consumable parts. Compared with other cutting tools, its cost is very very low. So more and more people select fiber laser cutter with its price's decline.

Fiber laser cutting speeds is largely dependent upon the fibre laser source, we use & also on other factors like motion system configuration, mechanical design, efficient stress relieving on bed & many more such parameters.

However our lasers in low power brackets have achieved up to 50mtr/min cutting speeds.