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Laser cut 3/8 aluminum?

GregSY

Diamond
Joined
Jan 1, 2005
Location
Houston
I know this question is 'it depends' but the shop I use for laser cutting is closed until Monday.

They have a large CNC guided laser cutter. I think it is a Strippit.

Is it reasonable that they could cut 3/8 aluminum plate? Or is that too thick for most tables?
 
I know this question is 'it depends' but the shop I use for laser cutting is closed until Monday.

They have a large CNC guided laser cutter. I think it is a Strippit.

Is it reasonable that they could cut 3/8 aluminum plate? Or is that too thick for most tables?

I don't think you can laser cut aluminum...?? I heard it from somewhere.
 
They've laser cut 1/8" for me before with no issues. I just don't know if that translates to 3/8" or not.
 
It would take a high wattage laser for aluminum that thick. I run an older 3000 watt Mitsubishi and 7 gauge aluminum is about our max. Half inch regular steel is no problem though.:D
 
Usually a laser cuts have the thickness of steel in al. The problem with aluminum is that in the molten state it has near 100% reflectivity which can cause the beam to feedback to the resonator and damage it. This problem is solved with a back reflector filter. When the beam feeds back it is out of phase with the outgoing beam so this reflector is polarized to filter feedback phasing of the beam.

For example W. A. Whitney's PlateLASER had a 6KW resenator and could cut 1.25" steel, 1.25" stainless steel and 0.5" Aluminum.

John
 
I recently had 5052 h32 3/8 laser cut without problems. Cut quality was good.
Do you have to weld the edge ? Sometime you need to grind the white on the cut edge, depend on the welding application.

Francis
 








 
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