Laser sheet unloading and removing parts from sheet

How does everyone handle unloading sheets from their machines and removing parts from the sheets when tabbed in? Do you use any special equipment or only manual labor?

IME theres no free ride on this one, its arguably the most involved part of the laser cutting process, getting thoes tags as small as reliably possible really helps though + were they are on any given part, its not so bad for big bits, but these days its rare any of my parts are bigger than a half dozen square inches of sheet so im sure my laser supplier is cursing me out under there breath.

Having ran a laser and plasma's IMHO its the worse part of the job. At least when running oxy fuel you sorta have time to do it whilst cutting.

adama said:

Im sure my laser supplier is cursing me out under there breath.

Click to expand...

They are trust me... haha One way our shop handles an order like this is you basically have to clean
out your laser table slag drop trays before you start the order. That way whatever falls through during the cutting you grab them all out after its done cutting.

As for other methods their are some. We use lots of small hand magnets to easily grab smaller items. For larger cuts we have large crane magnets. If its big enough we also use vacuum lifters with a crane lifted straight to a pallet to be packaged and fork lifted out. Besides this, its the most labor intensive part of the entire operation.

I was in a shop once that had large rail mounted oxy cutters (20' wide or so)

Water tables were set up that the slats would tilt up like a dump bed, the parts slid off onto a conveyor, to some one waiting
at the end to sort/deburr.

This was after the skeleton was lifted of with the crane ahead
of time.

How many tabs per part and where you put them makes a big difference in the effort required. My experience is waterjet not laser, the time tradeoff is different but the issue is similar. I think the big issue is whether you need multiple tabs per part and enough structural integrity to be able to lift and move the entire sheet without losing parts or making a tangled mess, or if you can get by with one or two tabs. We usually break out parts right on the table, only need to keep from losing parts & causing nozzle crashes, so it's usually one tab per part, located with some thought to what will make it easiest to break out. If using multiple tabs, I give some thought to locating the tabs so the part can twist without colliding with anything.

I think a lot of folks let the nesting software do its thing and while that saves programming time it creates extra work after the cut because the software either creates too many tabs or locates tabs in a way that prevents just twisting out the parts, as opposed to having to break the tabs in place.

We sometimes do multiple tabs so a grid of small parts stays intact enough to brush finish or otherwise process in bulk before breaking out.

Different for sheet metal where a finger can lift & break anything, vs. plate where a hammer is needed.

Our sheets are unload via the FMS and stacked on custom pallets on carts. The rest is all manual labor to break them out.

We use a number of different sized magnets and lots of sheet cuts so the guys can roll the skeletons up.

Tabs...we get smarter as time goes on. We add less tabs while the department is manned. When we run "lights out" we add more tabs.

Tab design is the biggest thing. We had our Software rewritten to leave the hanger on the slug we are throwing away. This leaves us with a little "nick" in the feature cut out but in 95% of the cases it does not matter. On slots we always add the Tab halfway around the radius on one end of the slot.

Have a bed of molten Cerrobend (85 Celsius or so) so the steel or aluminum parts just float on the surface and can be raked off. The Cerrobend doesn't stick to the steel. It's amazing watching a crescent wrench float in the stuff. I'm being facetious but actually I'm not. This might be a good idea.