TPT November 2021

AR T I C L E

Fives

Fibre laser flying orbital cut-off to help reduce operating costs for tube producers By Luca Ferraguti, product manager, Fives OTO SpA

An axes control allows the user to cut round tubes and hollow sections, keeping the head at the correct distance from it during all the cutting cycle. A set of dedicated solutions have also been implemented in order to optimise the impact of the laser beam on the tube such as:

Laser welded stainless steel tube producers can now take advantage of the fibre laser orbital flying cut-off developed by Fives. Guided in a flexible optic fibre cable, the laser beam has been designed to follow the profile of round tubes and hollow sections as well as directly cutting from a head that runs around the tube at the perfect distance. The fibre laser technology offers multiple advantages in terms of cost effectiveness, mainly thanks to blade and scrap saving, along with a higher speed in a light and easy to maintain mechanic. Special attention has also been paid to safety, preventing the high frequency laser beam from leaking anywhere from the equipment and allowing proper ventilation to the protection cabin. Fives aims to be one step ahead in supporting stainless steel tube makers with this glance into the future of laser cut-off technology. Today’s established technology used for in-line cut laser welded stainless steel tubes is cold saw cutting, with which tube producers have traditionally faced high operating costs, mainly due to blade wear, changeover downtimes and scrap waste. On the other hand, laser tube cutting has been present on the market for many years, but due to the Cartesian laser beam propagation technology it has been limited to round tubes. Because of this it has had a very narrow spread. In addition, the air-through laser beam path commonly leads to safety issues. Fives has developed an outstanding fibre laser technology that allows it to efficiently cut round tubes as well as hollow sections in an orbital fashion, especially designed for tubes from 114mm up to 604mm OD and of any wall thickness. When compared to cold saws, Fives fibre laser cut-offs lead to huge savings in terms of operating costs, scrap reduction and power consumption. Let us imagine a common orbital flying cut-off where, instead of blades, there are one or more laser heads, and the laser beam, coming from an external source, is guided through a fibre optic cable to each head. The laser head approaches the tube stopping at a given distance from it and starts to rotate along the tube perimeter until the “cut end” position.

• Focus management

• Corner radius management

• Distance fine adjustment between the tube and the laser head One of the most well-known issues related to laser cutting is the spatter that gets thrown on the internal tube surface, which instead must be kept as clean as possible to meet the strict regulations that apply to many food and drug related applications. To solve this, Fives patented a spatter catcher that gathers the melted particles projected by the laser cutting preventing them from adhering to the tube inner surface. Safety first Particular attention has been paid to safety, given the high frequency required by the cutting laser beam. A dedicated safety cabin comes with the equipment to protect against the moving parts and any laser beam leakage, leaving open viewing windows properly filtered against the involved laser wave length. Also, a safety PLC prevents the cabin’s door from opening until the equipment is shut down and all the internal environment parameters are within the requested values. Fibre laser technology advantages Let us now explore the advantages offered when compared to the classical blade cold saw. Getting your hands on a calculator, it is easy to compute the cost saving coming from the cutting process where no blade wear enters into operating costs.

68

www.read-tpt.com

NOVEMBER 2021