Any fellow Amada laser operators out there ?

Just looking to trade tips or tricks with any laser operators out there. little back ground my company purchased a used amada 2415 aII 2000kw laser. I got the job as the laser operator this is the only laser we have and i had to learn everything on my own did not no one thing about g code such a newb. No one to teach accept the internet lol which has done a fairly good job. I just wish it could be condensed onto one site. I had 3 days training when the machine was installed about one in reality the rest was the install lol i have all the books with the machine and internet access at work so i was lucky there. I had to hand write g code for the first 3 months till we actually decided on software that was fun but i think it has been a valuable lesson.we happened to be slow at the time and just worked on the plant for about 3 months so i had plenty of time to get the hang of it.i use fabriwin 2013 to do all the nesting and program writing now and create or modify parts when needed.does anyone else do all that as the operator?any way i have been running it for about a year now.just wanted to introduce my self maybe i can help someone out there also learn some new stuff. I think this is a great site enjoy reading the post.

ok i guess im the only laser operator on here

I use to run one a bit last year at a customer. Apart from changing the nozzles and takeing sheets on - off what exactly do you want to know? I never use to do the nesting on it, but i did a fair chunk of nesting for plasma and gas cutting at a previous job. There a pretty simple thing unless you want to start playing with the cut parameters and gain speed. Which you can gain a lot over the book values. No im not sharing those numbers either! There a pretty basic machine to run. IMHO a cnc mill or lathe has a lot more user dependant variables to get right. It was a sirca 5 year old 4Kw amada i use to run, no idea of model number. But just 2Kw will still get a lot done, especially in mild steel.

As to the creating the actual parts, im Autodesk Inventor certified operator and and proficient with solid-works too, but the pc side just bores me these days, playing with metal is what i enjoy.

IMHO getting the best out of any profile cutting gear is about good sheet storage and good sheet handling. Has way way more affect on run times than slight machine tweaks! Once thats slick then look at nesting and machine performance.

Hi i have had to do the same thing as you in the last year. what materials do you cut?

adama said:

There a pretty simple thing unless you want to start playing with the cut parameters and gain speed. Which you can gain a lot over the book values. No im not sharing those numbers either!

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Why not?

I would be real curious about tuning/maximizing cut parameters for lasers.

I am not really an operator. I do own 6 Lasers, 3 Amada 1212 Pulsars, 1 Mitsubishi CO2 and 2 Mitsubishi Fiber Lasers, a 4000 watt and 8000 watt. I have 3 guys that run all 6. 1 guy runs the 3 Mitsubushi's. Both are on an FMS System.

Have 2 brothers that run the Amada's. 1 on days and 1 on nights. My day time Amada Operator has been running Lasers since 1979. He can make those Amada do anything. Amada has sent Techs here to train them at times.

I play with one of the 1212's on the weekends making what ever I need. If I screw something up they fix it on Monday. Doesn't happen too often. Been running a 1212 since 1997.

I have been programming since 1989 using Fabriwin. Know it like the back of my hand.

What specifically are you looking for???

All of our programming for the Amada's is done in Engineering. The Programs are then stored on a server which the operators have access to download them. The Engineers are responsible for making sure the flats are correct. The Operator is responsible for the quality of cut and the feature sizes are correct meeting the print requirements.

We use the following conditions:

E1: Precision Cut; Tight tolerance holes and "fine" features" The operator adds these as required.
E2: Interior Holes
E3: Exterior
E4-E9 are open but my operators have a system for developing cutting conditions and saving them based on the Material.

They use Pierce 101 for Mild Steel and 102 for 4130.

The key is to develop a system and keep your system updated. Change 1 thing at a time and save the condition once you get it cutting like you want it to.

Fabriwin we save the Sheet only. Not the Part. They are stored by Customer\Part Number and Revision. No exceptions. Our database is going on 21 years old and if you want a part we made 20 years ago I can pull it up in about 2 minutes.

The NC Program is also stored by Customer and given a number from -0001 thru 9999. This is added a note on the Part File attached to the Sheet that is saved. In some customer directories we have over 7000 programs.

The Mitsubishis are programmed at the machine using NCell Nesting software. Engineering stores a flat pattern on the Mitz server and my operator can pull that file. Again stored in a customer directory by Part Number and Revision. The flats are stored again by using Fabriwin and storing only the sheet.

All flats a laser scanned using a Virtek Scanner and compared to the flat. Remember garbage in is garbage out. If the flat is wrong so is the part. It basically catches holes the operator for got to put in the cutting sequence or cutting on the wrong side because the programmer used the were G41 or G42 or in the case of the Turrets wrong tooling of tooling assigned to the wrong side of the line.

Hope that helps...if you have any other questions hit me up...If I don't know I can certainly ask one of my guys.

PS I am looking for an operator for one of my Fibers. 1 guy trying to keep up with 3 machines is finally catching up with my operator. After 10 years of non-stop 80 hour weeks he is asking for help...he is a work horse and loves the overtime. He keeps those machines running 24-7.

I have been running a 500w fiber laser for a couple of months now, there is a lot of information I don't have. We have a Chineseium clone of an Amada I believe, it's a piece of garbage. And the Chinese software that came with it is very unhelpful. I have no information on dialing in the cut parameters, and have to guess what most of the settings do. There is really very little information that I can find about setting up a fiber laser, and the material profiles they had with the machine were not very good. I mean really, the idiots were using WD-40 in the lube pump, and the laser head was off about 4 degrees from vertical. The Y axis motors were so loose on the rack that it couldn't make a round hole. Even opening files to program the cuts is a chore, I downloaded Librecad just to fix bad drawings and convert to a usable format, but it's barely usable. I can only imagine what it's like to run a good machine with usable software, it must be a great job.

Garwood said:

Why not?

I would be real curious about tuning/maximizing cut parameters for lasers.

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Kinda for the same reason your probably not going to want one of your current or x employe - contractor revealing your business secrets, but its fair to say if you can accept a slight loss in cut quality’s in barely measurable - noticeable way you can gain speed. Bump the speed bump the power and see how it cuts, rinse and repeat. Equally look at the pulse settings and you can sometimes gain a fair bit of speed out of thoes for a given cut quality, especially in straight line cutting. Bump it too high and edge quality falls of a cliff, contouring gets bad and corners - tight curves suffer terribly. You need to bump a parmeter see what it does and understand how that affects things and equally how other things can then be used to counter act it. Its all a trade off between heat, speed, cut quality and the cooling effect the assist gas has, works differently too if your cutting - more like burning steel with o2 not nitrogen too.

Material plays a big part too especially on a co2 laser, some batches of sheet can cut a good 10-20% faster than the next batch, this is IME most noticeable above 1/2" too, don't know why but do know its a lot trickier as it gets thick to stay in a sweet speed power and quality band.

Nozzle centring and general laser maintenance is another key thing, Everything needs to be right if you want great results and want to bump speeds, nozzle centring is IME the number one cause of crappy cuts and makes for a lot of clean up work. uneven cut quality - dross as you go around the od of a part and you have a nozzle issue or beam shaping. Way too many button pushing operators dont pause and pull parts - look at what there actually getting out quality wise!

Like most tools theres operators that run them then operators that drive them and push them. Gotta remember also the OEM settings are all based on testing done by the OEM, your conditions, your machine and your material will all be different and that can change things for better or worse.

Gaining a few percent on speed really pays back massively with a laser too, its a lot more parts you can do in a given shift, in a given service interval and with a given amount of assist - cutting gas. Bumping feed rate 10% on a laser unlike on say a VMC reduces costs way more so than is obvious. Unlike a VMC, theres no real extra cutter life cost from going faster, generally its the reverse with a laser, the faster you can cut it the less consumable life span - less gas gets used and the cheaper per part it is! Bit like nesting, drop a few extra parts in a given nest and the per part material cost can really fall. Same goes for the gutter width - space you leave between parts, not only does wider cost you in steel it also costs you in speed as it removes heat from the cut area slowing progress on fast cutting shapes. On high complexity shapes increaseing gutter width lets you bump the speed and power higher with out burning off finer details.

adama said:

Nozzle centring and general laser maintenance is another key thing.

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Is there some actual profession procedure to beam alignment? They have been sticking a piece of packing tape over the nozzle and burning a hole through it, then looking at it. Apparently that is how the installer showed them how to do it. It's not great, and I don't see any real improvement. In fact, I can change many of the settings a significant amount and see no difference in cut quality. Makes for a frustrating day. I can cut 1/8" mild steel with a reasonable finish most of the time, but it likes to just randomly start oxygen cutting or leaving heavy slag for no observable reason. I have no paperwork or documentation from the MTB (Dade Heavy Industries, do not recommend) so I have no place to look for answers. The MTB has no English resource that I can find, and I don't read Chinese.

Tape and blow a hole whilst incredably crude sounding, in skilled hands with good eye sight and a sutable magnification is damn near a industrial std! Done right its probaly the best way.

Is the material clean, to form plasma its generally to much power - crap building up and turning to plasma, beam focus height also matters. With only 500 watts, you dont have much to play with, we were north of 1.5Kw on 3mm to put things into perspective.

Try google translate, you really need some oem info at least as a starting point!

Winterfalke said:

Is there some actual profession procedure to beam alignment? They have been sticking a piece of packing tape over the nozzle and burning a hole through it, then looking at it. Apparently that is how the installer showed them how to do it. It's not great, and I don't see any real improvement. In fact, I can change many of the settings a significant amount and see no difference in cut quality. Makes for a frustrating day. I can cut 1/8" mild steel with a reasonable finish most of the time, but it likes to just randomly start oxygen cutting or leaving heavy slag for no observable reason. I have no paperwork or documentation from the MTB (Dade Heavy Industries, do not recommend) so I have no place to look for answers. The MTB has no English resource that I can find, and I don't read Chinese.

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adama said:

Tape and blow a hole whilst incredably crude sounding, in skilled hands with good eye sight and a sutable magnification is damn near a industrial std! Done right its probaly the best way.

Is the material clean, to form plasma its generally to much power - crap building up and turning to plasma, beam focus height also matters. With only 500 watts, you dont have much to play with, we were north of 1.5Kw on 3mm to put things into perspective.

Try google translate, you really need some oem info at least as a starting point!

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Tape shots are a pretty good start but does not take into account and variations in the Nozzle Geometry.

Best way to do it is create a peck pierce program. Using a heavy piece of Material move in 1/4 increments in x or y just piercing and see if you get a round pattern of sparks equally in all directions. It does not have to pierce all the way through the material. Just enough to throw a spark pattern. Keep adjusting until the sparks create and nice round pattern on average from the Nozzle Center. Now you have the beam centered on the assist gas flow which is what you are really looking to do.

^ wish i knew that trick before now! That said, the tape approach always worked well for me, may not be as good, but proved good enough to not cause any cut issues going around a part.

Winterfalke said:

Is there some actual profession procedure to beam alignment? They have been sticking a piece of packing tape over the nozzle and burning a hole through it, then looking at it. Apparently that is how the installer showed them how to do it. It's not great, and I don't see any real improvement. In fact, I can change many of the settings a significant amount and see no difference in cut quality. Makes for a frustrating day. I can cut 1/8" mild steel with a reasonable finish most of the time, but it likes to just randomly start oxygen cutting or leaving heavy slag for no observable reason. I have no paperwork or documentation from the MTB (Dade Heavy Industries, do not recommend) so I have no place to look for answers. The MTB has no English resource that I can find, and I don't read Chinese.

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Hey Your in Deltona.. I'm in Orange City just up the road... Also running a 500 watt chinese but we are actually getting it going pretty well. We have some of the answers puzzled out I think.. Also Google translate is a great tool for reading the instructions that are missing. I would be happy to try to help you sort some of the issues out.

We had a fair number of the same issues with edge quality, getting it dialed in took a fair amount of guessing but there is a VERY important relationship of gas flow to nozzle standoff, what are you running for gas pressure, nozzle size, standoff, and feed speed?
If you feed too much oxygen you often get runaway burning. Our setup tech had the oxygen at something like 6.5 bar for everything and we had some runaway burning on corners and the like, when the metal got hot enough it would burn it, the answer was to turn down the oxygen to something like 3 bar and go from the 1.5mm nozzle to a 1mm nozzle and to increase the feed speed.. Sometimes the answers ended up being very counter intuitive.

This link looks super funky. It is a PDF file..
http://www.laserdeal.com/techInfoFiles/Facts about Laser Cutting engl[1]. Drucklayout 23.06.03.pdf

Anyway on page 12 of the document it gives a table for oxygen cutting that seems to work ok, it at least gives you a starting point.
One thing is the laser wattage is showing a co2 which throws off the numbers a bit since you don't have transmission loss with a fiber like you do with a co2.

My brother has a theory on the nozzle size to pressure, your trying to have a certain amount of pressure at the cut, to high and you get a bad cut too low and again you get a bad cut. I'll try to get him to write it out so I can post it..

I'm actually trying to put together a video series to help people getting these machines to get them setup.. Most of the information from the big 2-4KW units does not directly apply, much like using a haas VMC feed and speed chart does not directly apply to a Tomach.

Edit: I was having trouble finding dade heavy industry, but looks like these guys. Jiangsu Dade Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. - laser cutting machine, plasma cutting machine
I did find a manual for the Capacitance controller which is what controls the nozzle offset to get that search bcl3764_v2.0 on google and look for downloads.fscut.com and it is sadly a pdf of nothing but chinese, I was not able to translate the whole document But using google translate for sections was helpful.

Not revealing too many secrets, but on a 4kw amada, i would only be running a 1.2mm nozzel at around 4 bar of oxygen to cut 15mm steel plate. A 500 watt laser would never need that kinda nozzel size, unless your maybe cutting with nitrogen?? In which case large nozzels and high pressures above 10 bar are common! With oxygen you don't need much at all, if anything you should be able to go lower than 3 bar, dropping the gas pressure even a little saves a lot of gas too and hence also helps reduce cut costs so its well worth working out the minimums, not just a safe maximum.

Speed is a simple way of staying ahead of getting the material too hot, other options to dial back the power or dial back the pulse duration. Best cut quality nearly always comes from less power. but enough speed sorta bordering towards the point your no longer cutting cleanly all the way through took me a while to work that one out as its not what seams obvious. But best is really about keeping things cold not hot at least till you have cut them! Running correctly parts in the 6x6" square in say 1/8" plate should be just hot to the touch - maybe too hot to pick up by a bare hand but easily and comfortably lift-able with even a thin glove.

Corners, most real industrial lasers switch mode and drop speed - drop power, to prevent burning, you have to keep the steel around the cut bellow ignition point in the oxygen stream, hence its real common to drop to a third less power and also a lot lower duty cycle of beam on on the pulses to get sharp corners, think of if a bit kinda like plunge milling, not running a cutter in a conventional tool path. Think a given parameter setting - nozzle - material on the amada i was around had a good 6-9 settings depending on piercing, straight cutting or various degree of cornering.

adama said:

Not revealing too many secrets, but on a 4kw amada, i would only be running a 1.2mm nozzel at around 4 bar of oxygen to cut 15mm steel plate. A 500 watt laser would never need that kinda nozzel size, unless your maybe cutting with nitrogen?? In which case large nozzels and high pressures above 10 bar are common! With oxygen you don't need much at all, if anything you should be able to go lower than 3 bar, dropping the gas pressure even a little saves a lot of gas too and hence also helps reduce cut costs so its well worth working out the minimums, not just a safe maximum.

Speed is a simple way of staying ahead of getting the material too hot, other options to dial back the power or dial back the pulse duration. Best cut quality nearly always comes from less power. but enough speed sorta bordering towards the point your no longer cutting cleanly all the way through took me a while to work that one out as its not what seams obvious. But best is really about keeping things cold not hot at least till you have cut them! Running correctly parts in the 6x6" square in say 1/8" plate should be just hot to the touch - maybe too hot to pick up by a bare hand but easily and comfortably lift-able with even a thin glove.

Corners, most real industrial lasers switch mode and drop speed - drop power, to prevent burning, you have to keep the steel around the cut bellow ignition point in the oxygen stream, hence its real common to drop to a third less power and also a lot lower duty cycle of beam on on the pulses to get sharp corners, think of if a bit kinda like plunge milling, not running a cutter in a conventional tool path. Think a given parameter setting - nozzle - material on the amada i was around had a good 6-9 settings depending on piercing, straight cutting or various degree of cornering.

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This whole exchange should really be its own thread since the next poor soul with a chinese machine is not going to look in the Amada thread for answers..

The reason for the 1 MM nozzle is that is the smallest ones they sent with my machine, and I am finding the regulator they included does not really have enough lower range to accurately target the lower oxygen pressures needed. The machine I have has a 32mm x 15mm nozzle with M14 threads... I ordered a few other sizes that are coming in today, smallest I could find was a .8mm

Cypcut while very goofy feeling with random sections that are chinese and no manual, does have menu options for what I think it calls "dynamic cutting" which will adjust laser power and speed and HZ rate to do exactly what you are saying. It is a little confusing to get to the menu but it is there, and you have options to do a pierce cycle and also options to allow for cooling points for finer geometry.. Again these are NOT high end machines, but with actual instructions you can make the machine do most of what you want, at least that is what I have found so far.

centering is important. does anyone have tips on getting the nitro pressures set right. im cutting .250 stainless but i have to have the pressure set at 7.9 MPa to get a good cut.

csspecs said:

This whole exchange should really be its own thread since the next poor soul with a chinese machine is not going to look in the Amada thread for answers..

The reason for the 1 MM nozzle is that is the smallest ones they sent with my machine, and I am finding the regulator they included does not really have enough lower range to accurately target the lower oxygen pressures needed. The machine I have has a 32mm x 15mm nozzle with M14 threads... I ordered a few other sizes that are coming in today, smallest I could find was a .8mm

Cypcut while very goofy feeling with random sections that are chinese and no manual, does have menu options for what I think it calls "dynamic cutting" which will adjust laser power and speed and HZ rate to do exactly what you are saying. It is a little confusing to get to the menu but it is there, and you have options to do a pierce cycle and also options to allow for cooling points for finer geometry.. Again these are NOT high end machines, but with actual instructions you can make the machine do most of what you want, at least that is what I have found so far.

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I have only ever used - been around the industrial pro grade lasers, from a 1.5kw on up. They all had gas presure regulation built in, IMHO you probably need a decent 2 stage regulator, its key to controlling things, you need that stable gas flow rate to get that stable gas jet, fluctuating pressures not going to help you. Better regulator will probably pay for its self though over time letting you run ever lower pressures hence using ever less gas. To put gas use in perspective on a sort 2 shift day 5 -6 day week your looking at about 2000 liters of liquid nitrogen and a good 16 or so full size oxygen bottles every 2-3 weeks, lasers use a lot of assist gas!

As to nozzle size, i think 0.6 was the smallest we had, but im sorta going from fuzzy memories there. The amada nozzels were really pretty simple though, just a straight forward little nozzel, no threads just a small flange that gets clamped by a collar against a o' ring that jumped out randomly at only some nozzle changes to keep you on your toes!

Theres the whole beam shaping thing too, techs at every service will fire the unfocused beam into a large block of acrylic, the shape and evenness of what it removes is a key indication as to the state of the optics. Not sure how the Chinese ones do that, but its a key test of beam quality and really shows a lot if there’s been issues with cut quality.

As Cutting tools go, lasers may be fast, but there picky rich bitches of machines, nothings cheap, nothing is simple and nothing is obvious - easy, gas and plasma cutting are just so simple and low maintenance in comparison.

Nitrogen cutting stianless, you can expect high pressures and also large nozzel sizes, on the amada 3mm nozzel and 14 bar was not uncommon for 10mm stainless and it only dropped to a 2 or 2.5mm nozzel at circa 10-11 bar for 6mm stainless. Worth adding, you need to pre cut any plastic protective films and film on the underneath was a big no no, even a label would kill the cut.

we ae running a amada 2415 3 laser currently 3mm nozzle. 8 bar on gas. the nozzles screw in on this one so i guess lm lucky lol. what is the best way to check for gas fluctuation? im still learning a lot on this machine im self taught. only been running it a year and a half

I too am looking to gain some knowledge. We bought a used 2412 BIII a few years back and finally have it up and running. So far it has done everything we have wanted to do but we are looking to branch out so to say. We are a small job shop with a couple of National accounts that keeps us busting most of the year, but we are now expanding our machine shop. All I have learned is from what the guy that finally got us up and running has taught me. I have basic machining knowledge and am a designer/fabricator by trade. We use BOBCAD V32 right now for all of our posting, and the loaded NC Editor to transfer files to the controller. Like I said, everything I have designed, loaded and cut has worked out fine. But we want to do more. Different materials, thicknesses(so far we have only went up to 1/4"). Anything would be appreciated!