In recent years, my country’s manufacturing industry has developed very rapidly. Metal processing is a core process in the manufacturing industry. The efficiency and quality of metal processing will greatly affect the development of the manufacturing industry. Metal processing is to process the metal base material into a whole board, and then cut and classify the whole board according to the type of parts. At present, the common metal cutting methods are: flame cutting, laser cutting, wire cutting, plate cutter processing, plasma cutting and water cutting. This article mainly introduces the differences between various cutting processes that are common at present, for your reference only.
1. Flame cutting: At present, flame cutting is mainly a technology for processing thick plates. Flame cutting has great advantages for metal plates over 50mm, but it has its shortcomings in thin plate cutting. The accuracy of flame cutting is not high, and the heat of thin plate cutting is greatly affected, the deformation is obvious, and even directly melts through. If you want to cut an ideal workpiece with flame, this has a high requirement for the operator’s technology.
2. Laser cutting: Laser cutting equipment was originally aimed at the field of thin plates. The cutting speed of thin plates within 5mm is fast and the precision is high. Now high-power laser cutting equipment can process plates within 50mm, and the cutting effect is better than flame cutting. At present, the laser cutting speed is faster than other similar cutting processes, and the precision can be controlled at ±0.05mm, but the equipment cost is high, and the cutting effect in the field of thick plates is not ideal.
3. Wire cutting: Wire cutting is also called wire EDM. It is developed on the basis of EDM perforation and forming. Wire cutting can cut regardless of material thickness and hardness. Wire cutting can also process complex graphics, and its accuracy is comparable to laser cutting. Wire cutting also has certain shortcomings. It can only process conductive materials. The cutting efficiency is slow. It can only process a few millimeters per minute. The processing can only be processed vertically and cannot be processed horizontally. The overall processing method is limited.
4. Shearing machine: The shearing machine uses a moving upper blade and a fixed lower blade to apply shear force to metal plates of various thicknesses with a reasonable blade gap, so that the plates are broken and separated according to the required size. The machining accuracy of the shearing machine is moderate, which has advantages compared with flame cutting, and the processing efficiency is also outstanding. However, the shearing machine can only process straight lines, and cannot process arcs and complex graphics.
5. Plasma cutting machine: Plasma cutting is a processing method that uses the heat of high-temperature plasma arc to melt part or part of the metal at the incision of the workpiece, and uses the momentum of high-speed plasma to remove the molten metal to form a processing method. The plasma cutting machine has a large cutting thickness, small cutting deformation, no preheating for cutting, and the equipment cost is relatively lower than that of the laser cutting machine. However, the precision error of the plasma cutting machine is large, the light pollution is obvious during the cutting process, and the noise and dust pollution cannot be avoided.
6. Ultra-high pressure water cutting: Ultra-high pressure water cutting is also called water jet and water jet. Jet cutting at a speed of nearly a thousand meters, this cutting method is called ultra-high pressure water cutting. Waterjet cutting has strong versatility and can cut almost all materials. There is no thermal impact on cutting, and the cutting surface of materials is smooth without deformation. However, the cost of water cutting is high, and cutting requires a lot of water and sand, which seriously pollutes the environment. Because water is involved in cutting, it is easy to rust when processing carbon steel, and the later maintenance is troublesome.
