Corte a Laser de Tubos: Tudo o que Você Precisa Saber

Do you have a manufacturing project that requires automation, precision, and flexibility? Are you working with metal tubes and need intricate patterns cut into them? If your answer is yes, then tube laser cutting is likely the perfect solution for your needs. This cutting-edge technology ensures high-quality cuts and designs that are ready for assembly in industries such as construction and automotive.

For clean, sharp cuts that require no additional finishing, tube laser cutting stands out as the best choice.

To help you decide if tube laser cutting is right for your operation, we’ve created this comprehensive guide. Dive in to learn everything you need to know about the process and how it can transform the way you cut your metal tubing. This guide will equip you with the knowledge to make an informed and smart choice for your business.

What Is Laser Tube Cutting?

Tube laser cutting is precisely what its name implies: a machining process designed for cutting tubes of various shapes to specific lengths or for engraving patterns onto them. This automated technique offers significantly greater speed and accuracy compared to traditional methods like sawing or manually drilling holes.

The applications for tube laser cutting span across numerous industries. For instance, one of our recent customers specializes in manufacturing welding tables. After spending countless hours sawing and drilling hundreds of table legs, he was amazed by the efficiency of our tube laser cutting machine. He couldn’t believe such a productive solution existed for cutting tube legs, especially since his local custom metal fabrication shop had been offering this capability all along!

What Is Tube Laser

Tube lasers are designed to efficiently laser cut various light structural shapes, which typically include:

• Round Tube
• Round Pipe
• Square Tube
• Rectangular Tube
• Angle
• Channel
• Custom Shaped Extrusions

These machines come in different sizes, but generally, they are built to handle lengths of 20-24 feet for the aforementioned shapes and sizes.

Most tube laser machines are equipped with auto-loaders or semi-auto-loaders, enabling them to move bundles of material through the cutting process at high speed. This automation significantly enhances productivity, reducing manual handling time.

A standard tube laser can cut tubes with an outer diameter (OD) ranging from 1″ to about 8″. Larger tube lasers are capable of cutting materials up to 14″ OD.

The complexity of these machines is impressive. Imagine them gripping a piece of tubing, moving it laterally from left to right, rotating the tube, and simultaneously cutting at different angles—all with extreme precision.

Even more impressive is the sophisticated programming required to cut different shapes—whether it’s round, square, angled, or channels, each requires precise calculations and movements.

Most of these tube lasers are considered 5-axis machines. Watching them in action reveals the level of coordination happening simultaneously, as they perform multiple complex tasks to produce precise and intricate cuts.

How Does Laser Tube Cutting Work?

Laser tube cutting is a highly precise machining process that employs a high-powered laser to cut through various types of metal tubes or pipes with remarkable accuracy and efficiency. Here’s a detailed overview of how the process works:

Preparation

The first step involves securely mounting the tube or pipe onto the cutting machine. This ensures stability and precision during the cutting process. The laser cutting machine is typically programmed with a specific cutting pattern and the required dimensions. Advanced software allows for intricate designs to be inputted, enabling the machine to execute complex cuts that may be challenging to achieve with traditional methods.

Focusing the Laser

Once the machine is set up, the laser beam is directed towards the surface of the metal tube. A specialized lens focuses the laser beam, adjusting it to account for the thickness and width of the cut. This focusing mechanism is crucial, as it determines the intensity and precision of the cut, allowing for varying thicknesses of metal to be handled efficiently.

Cutting Process

With the laser beam focused, it is activated along the designated path of the tube, initiating the cutting process. The high-energy laser beam penetrates the tube wall, effectively vaporizing the metal along the cutting line. This results in clean and precise edges, significantly reducing the need for additional machining or finishing work. The speed and accuracy of laser cutting also allow for high production rates, making it an ideal choice for manufacturing environments where efficiency is key.

Post-Processing

After the cutting is completed, any sharp edges or burrs are removed through post-processing techniques such as deburring, sanding, or polishing. These finishing touches are important to ensure the safety and quality of the final product, especially if the cut tubes will be used in applications that require a smooth finish for assembly or welding.

Overall, laser tube cutting is a sophisticated process that combines advanced technology with precision engineering, resulting in high-quality cuts that meet the demanding requirements of various industries, including automotive, aerospace, and construction.

Five Advantages of Laser Tube Cutting

Laser tube cutting comes with a lot of advantages. Let’s take a look at a few.

Flexibility

Laser tube cutting can handle a lot of different sizes and shapes of tubes. From less than an inch all the way up to 9 inches, cut the diameter of the tube you need. Rectangular tubes can also be cut up to 9 inches across.

Length is no issue either. Standard tubing of 24 feet is easily taken care of. 

A quarter of an inch of carbon steel is no match for laser tube cutting. Machines can also cut through stainless steel up to 0.25 inches. And on titanium, laser tube cutting gets through 0.04 inches with no problems either.

Use laser tube cutting on tubes with round, rectangular, or irregular profiles.

Shape, size, and thickness are no problems. The variety that laser tube cutting can handle shows the broad flexibility these machines can deal with. 

Materials

Laser tube cutting works on a wide range of materials. Choose this method for carbon steel, aluminum, stainless steel, and titanium. 

If you need to cut reflective material, you should opt for a fiber laser rather than a CO2 cutter. 

You can even cut non-metals. A laser tube cutter can work on everything from a piece of bread to wood, plastic, and styrofoam.

Efficiency

Because laser tube cutters are so precise and flexible, they are also extremely efficient. Tubes cut with these machines do not need any extra processing after the cut. The cuts are clean and precise, so there are no leftover materials to remove.

Cutting to length and doing complex designs are done with one machine. There are no additional tools needed. This means you don’t have to change out pieces or parts, so your workflow is improved.

By using one piece of raw metal for all parts, laser tube cutters reduce the waste. This reduces the cost of your project.

Parts cut by a laser tube cutter will fit together easily and precisely. That means the secondary construction is simple and efficient as well.

Precision

The precision of cutting from a laser tube cutter means no secondary operation is needed. The parts are ready to use or assemble once they come off the cutter.

Custo

The efficiency and precision of laser tube cutters mean producing even complex parts is simple and automated. The automation reduces manual labor and improves time to completion. Your production line will be less costly when using a laser tube cutter.

Cutting Capabilities of Tube Lasers

What Material Types Can Tube Lasers Cut?

Tube lasers are quite similar to flat sheet lasers in terms of the materials they can handle. CO2 lasers are capable of cutting traditional metals such as steel, stainless steel, aluminum, and galvanized materials.

On the other hand, fiber tube lasers go beyond that by also cutting highly reflective metals like copper and brass, which are challenging for CO2 lasers. The primary difference lies in the cutting technology: CO2 lasers struggle with reflective materials, whereas fiber lasers are well-equipped to handle them efficiently. This makes fiber tube lasers more versatile for cutting a wider range of metals.

What Size Shapes Can Tube Lasers Cut?

Tube lasers come in various sizes, each designed to handle specific ranges of tube shapes. Some machines are capable of cutting large tubes up to 16-18 inches in diameter, while others are limited to smaller shapes, cutting tubes as small as 2 inches in diameter.

Most fabrication shops opt for machines that fall somewhere in the middle, capable of handling tube shapes ranging from 1 to 8 inches.

However, larger machines tend to operate more slowly than smaller ones. This creates a tradeoff between flexibility and speed, where bigger machines offer more versatility but at the cost of slower cutting performance.

What Material Shapes Can Tube Lasers Cut?

As the name suggests, tube lasers excel at laser cutting various types of tubes. This includes a wide range of shapes and sizes, such as round, square, rectangular, and even oval tubes.

However, many people don’t realize that tube lasers are also highly effective at cutting other structural shapes. In addition to tubes, these machines can precisely cut angles, channels, beams, and even custom-shaped extrusions, making them incredibly versatile for diverse manufacturing needs.

What Cutting Tolerances Can Tube Lasers Achieve?

Cutting flat sheets and cutting shaped materials like tubes, angles, and channels present different challenges. Unlike flat sheets, these shaped materials often have more variability, such as bows or twists, which can make achieving tight tolerances more difficult.

Despite these challenges, most tube lasers can maintain tolerances of +/- .010. To enhance accuracy, many machines utilize touch-probe technology, which physically touches the tube before cutting to ensure precision. While this results in highly accurate parts, it can slow down the cutting process.

In comparison, flat laser cutting often achieves tighter tolerances, around +/- .005, but for tube laser cutting, +/- .010 is typically the maximum achievable tolerance. Even so, this level of precision is still quite impressive, especially when compared to traditional methods like saw cutting and drilling.

Application of Tube Laser Cutting Machine

Tube laser cutting machines are widely used across various industries due to their precision, flexibility, and efficiency. Here are some key applications:

Automotive Industry

Tube laser cutting is used to produce precise and lightweight components such as exhaust systems, chassis frames, and roll cages, improving vehicle performance and fuel efficiency.

Aerospace Industry

Aerospace manufacturers rely on tube laser cutting for intricate, high-precision components, such as aircraft frames, landing gear, and support structures, ensuring accuracy and reducing material waste.

Construction Industry

Structural elements like beams, columns, and architectural frames are produced using tube lasers to create strong, precise joints and fittings that enhance the overall stability of buildings.

Furniture Manufacturing

Tube lasers are used in the production of modern, sleek furniture designs, cutting metal tubing for chairs, tables, and shelving with high precision and minimal waste.

Medical Device Manufacturing

In the medical field, tube laser cutting is crucial for creating surgical instruments, stents, and other medical devices that require exacting tolerances and complex geometries.

Fitness Equipment

Laser-cut tubes are frequently used in the manufacturing of gym equipment like workout machines and support structures, ensuring durability and precise assembly.

Shipbuilding and Marine Industry

Tube lasers help in cutting pipes and structural elements used in shipbuilding, ensuring corrosion-resistant, high-quality cuts for marine applications.

Custom Fabrication and Art

Tube lasers are often used in custom metal fabrication and artistic installations, allowing designers to create intricate patterns and shapes in metal tubing for unique projects.

With the ability to handle diverse materials and shapes, tube laser cutting machines play a vital role in industries where precision and efficiency are critical.

How Tube Lasers Are Transforming the Manufacturing World

Tube laser cutting is revolutionizing manufacturing, offering engineers and fabricators new possibilities that were previously difficult or expensive to achieve. Complex shapes and sizes, such as cutting slots in tubes, were once time-consuming tasks that required machining. Today, tube laser cutting makes these processes easy and efficient.

By designing parts with tube laser capabilities in mind, engineers have more flexibility and can explore a wider range of design outcomes. The impact goes beyond design, significantly improving downstream manufacturing processes as well.

Traditionally, tube and shape cutting was done with saws, a method that is both slow and imprecise. Saw cutting not only takes time but also results in inaccuracies that can cause problems in subsequent stages, like welding. For instance, fabricating a simple rectangular frame from 2.0 x 2.0 x .125 square tube would require multiple miter cuts at precise 45-degree angles. With a saw, setting up and cutting these angles is labor-intensive and often inaccurate.

When parts are cut imprecisely, welders are left to deal with variable gaps that lead to longer fit-up times and inconsistent welds. This can result in the frame being pulled out of alignment. Skilled welders can manage these issues, but it slows down the entire process.

In contrast, tube lasers provide such accuracy that there are no inconsistent gaps or poor fits, speeding up both the cutting and welding processes significantly. Even though this is a simple example, the advantages of tube laser cutting become even more pronounced with complex parts.

Overall, tube lasers are transforming the manufacturing world by enhancing both design flexibility and fabrication efficiency.

Challenges in Tube Laser Cutting

In addition to dealing with twists and bends in structural shapes, tube lasers can face challenges due to variability in edge radii. For instance, when working with a 2.0 x 2.0 x .125 tube, some manufacturers produce tubes with a .125-inch edge radius, while others may have a .187-inch edge radius. This seemingly minor .062-inch difference can pose significant challenges for programmers attempting to execute detailed cuts around the tube.

To mitigate this issue, one effective strategy is to order batches of tube sizes from the same manufacturer, ensuring consistency in edge radii.

Another challenge is that shaped materials are often less clean than traditional sheet metals. Factors such as rust, debris, dirt, and lacquer finishes can complicate laser cutting, leading to slower processing times. Recognizing the importance of clean materials for effective tube laser cutting, metal suppliers have begun taking steps to improve the quality of shaped materials, similar to the advancements made in sheet and plate metals.

How To Choose A Tube Laser Cutter

When selecting the right metal pipe laser cutting machine, there are several important factors to consider:

1. Cutting Material: Identify the type of metal tube you will be working with and ensure that the tube laser cutting machine is capable of handling those specific materials. Different machines may have varying capabilities when it comes to cutting various types and thicknesses of metal.
2. Cutting Precision and Quality: Assess the cutting precision and quality of the machine. Look for features such as high cutting speed, accuracy, and smoothness of the cut. These factors are essential to ensuring that your finished products meet the desired specifications.
3. After-Sales Service: Evaluate the quality and availability of after-sales service offered by the brand. This includes technical support, maintenance, and the accessibility of spare parts. A dependable after-sales service is crucial for keeping your tube laser cutting machine operating smoothly and for addressing any issues that may arise promptly.

KRRASS takes pride in its dedicated customer service team, comprising over 200 members who provide quick responses and 24-hour technical support in 12 different languages, both online and offline. We are committed to delivering comprehensive and dedicated after-sales service to ensure our customers experience the highest level of support and satisfaction. Our team of highly trained professionals is always ready to assist with any concerns or issues that may arise after purchasing our products. From troubleshooting technical problems to providing timely repairs and replacements, KRRASS has established a streamlined process that ensures efficient communication, fast response times, and effective resolution of customer inquiries and requests.