With its unique technological advantages, laser processing is increasingly showing strong vitality and broad application prospects in the field of high-end intelligent manufacturing.

Laser processing technology achieves another breakthrough

The laser, known as the "fastest knife","the most accurate ruler" and "the brightest light", has made a new breakthrough in the field of high-end intelligent manufacturing processing.

A few days ago, Chuangxin Laser, a well-known domestic laser manufacturer, launched two series of products, Rongguang and Xinguang, based on the brand-new technical solution of "hardware homology", and achieved a number of technological breakthroughs.

According to reports,"hardware homology" means that multiple devices or systems share the same hardware resource or component. This design can simplify hardware design and save resources.

Zeng Jianfeng, head of Chuangxin Laser Market and Brand, believes that there are still four major problems to be solved in laser processing: First, the frequency of splash failures in laser processing is high, which leads to problems such as burrs, uneven cutting surfaces, and impenetrability or perforation; Second, for different processing materials, laser equipment needs to debug various parameters, which greatly reduces processing efficiency; Third, mature laser cutting operators are difficult to recruit, and labor costs are generally high; Fourth, some plates are still not enough to be cut by laser at present. For example, carbon steel above 40mm can only be cut by flame, which requires secondary processing, which is time-consuming and laborious.

He said that most of the current problems in the field of laser processing are caused by the "low nozzle process" of the cutting head, and the problem of difficulty in adjusting the cutting process is almost caused by the mismatch between the optical path and structural parameters of the laser and the cutting head. In response to this problem, Chuangxin Laser has innovatively launched the "hair growth cream" technology. By increasing the nozzle height to 10mm, the splash failure rate is reduced by 50% to 80%, while avoiding problems such as the cutting head hitting the plate and grinding the nozzle. In addition, in conjunction with Chuangxin Laser's "laser wire" optical path design, the new product expands the traditional 2 focuses to 9 focuses, significantly improving the verticality and consistency of the light knife, thereby realizing "one-click cutting"--Users do not need to manually adjust parameters such as focus, concentricity and coaxiality, and directly call more than 200 kinds of expert-level process parameter libraries built into the system, greatly reducing the operating threshold.

It is worth noting that, especially for the problem of thick plate cutting in the shipbuilding industry, Chuangxin Laser adopts the "digital spot + multi-gun model" technology to realize the high-energy-density beam thin plate A mode and the thick plate B mode with stepped energy output respectively. High-speed cutting of medium thin plates and high-quality smooth cutting of thick plates perfectly replace traditional flame technology.

Moving towards more high-end intelligent manufacturing fields

At present, with the three characteristics of monochromism, coherence and parallelism, laser processing has become the main force in laser applications at home and abroad. It not only promotes the upgrading of traditional industries, but also demonstrates excellent performance in many high-end intelligent manufacturing fields.

In the field of shipbuilding, the traditional cutting methods for hull plate parts mainly include flame cutting, plasma cutting, shearing processing and laser cutting. Compared with laser cutting, other cutting methods have shortcomings in many aspects, such as wide slits, poor cutting accuracy, easy generation of harmful gases, and pollution of the environment. The laser-cut marine steel plate has good slit quality, good verticality of the cut surface, smooth surface, no need for secondary processing, can be directly welded, has small thermal deformation, high curve cutting degree, effectively reduces the processing cost of ship steel structures.

Automobile manufacturing is one of the most widely used fields of laser processing technology. For example, in automobile prototypes and small-batch production, three-dimensional laser cutting machines are widely used, which not only saves traditional templates and tooling equipment, but also significantly shortens production preparation time. In addition, laser welding has become a standard process in the automotive industry. Some automobile companies have used laser technology to weld body panels, successfully connecting metal plates of different thicknesses and coated surfaces together, and then stamping and forming.

Not only that, laser heat treatment is also widely used in the automotive industry, such as heat treatment of cylinder liners, crankshafts, piston rings, commutator and gears. In some developed countries in the automobile industry, laser processing technology is combined with computer numerical control technology and flexible manufacturing technology to further derive laser rapid prototyping technology. This technology can not only quickly manufacture accurate models, but also directly manufacture metal molds through the melting of metal powder, greatly expanding the application scope of laser processing technology.

In the aerospace field, laser technology is mainly used for cutting special aerospace materials, such as titanium alloys, aluminum alloys, nickel alloys, chromium alloys, stainless steel, beryllium oxide, composite materials, plastics, ceramics and quartz. With the rapid development of aviation, laser cutting technology for special materials such as tungsten alloys and titanium alloys has become one of the important research directions in the aerospace industry.

Obviously, as a key technology in today's manufacturing industry, laser processing technology is increasingly showing its strong vitality and broad application prospects.

Technological innovation is also needed to break "homogeneity"

While laser technology shows its unique charm in the field of industrial processing, many laser equipment manufacturers are involved in the so-called homogenization competition of "power first" and "price is king".

Zeng Jianfeng said that data shows that sales of complete laser cutting equipment will exceed 110,000 units in 2023, but more than half of the production capacity is crowded in the mid-to-low-end market. Continued price competition under heavy pressure has caused the industry's gross profit margin to fall below 3%. The main reason for this phenomenon is that some companies fall into the "innovator's dilemma"(that is, they rely too much on existing technologies and needs to effectively respond to market changes).

Taking the shipbuilding industry as an example, China, which has ranked first in the world in the three major indicators of the global shipbuilding industry (shipbuilding completions, new orders received, and hand-held orders) for 15 consecutive years, needs to process millions of tons of steel every year, mainly medium and thick plates. However, while "the penetration rate of high-power laser cutting equipment in the industrial manufacturing field has further increased, the penetration rate of the thick plate market is still far lower than that of the thin plate market." This shows that most companies are still replicating the old model of "power is efficiency, low price, orders", while demand gaps in high-end fields such as shipbuilding and offshore equipment have been ignored by companies that have piled into the extensive cutting market.

The industry generally believes that the way out for the laser processing industry lies in technological innovation.

Not long ago, GW Guanghui Laser, which focuses on fiber lasers and supporting solutions, redefined the performance boundaries of laser equipment with its revolutionary active air conditioning direct cooling technology (AAC technology), not only allowing 10,000 watts. Continuous fiber lasers no longer only have water cooling cooling as a cooling method, but also bring their heat dissipation technology to a higher level.

Another laser manufacturer, Han's Laser, is targeting the "AI+ Laser Application" track and has increased research and development efforts to achieve an unmanned intelligent production model for laser manufacturing automation.

Zeng Jianfeng said that the role of Chuangxin Laser is also changing, from an "equipment supplier" to a "manufacturing capability enabler": on the one hand, it helps customers accelerate their entry into the high-end market to achieve a closed-loop value; on the other hand, it opens up new growth points for the laser processing industry.