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Feasible to drill and tap holes on router before laser cutter?

wddanie

Plastic
Joined
Aug 28, 2006
Location
Atlanta, GA
How do you drill and tap holes in laser cut parts?

We take the flat parts off our Trumpf Trulaser 3030 and use a drill press to drill and tap the pilot holes produced by the laser.

I was considering getting a big router like the Haas GR-510 and put the 0.125 in thick x 4 x 8 ft steel sheet on the router and drill and tap holes there, and add a fiducial in two of the corners. Then load the sheet in the laser cutter, use the Detectline feature to detect the fiducial holes and zero the coordinate system and laser cut the part profile.

The advantage is eliminating the material handling of singulated parts for the drill tap operation since this approach does it in the large sheet.

Has anyone done this with a Trumpf and how feasible is the idea?

How accurately will the Trumpf Detectline feature allow you to register the part location so that you can then cut another feature on the part?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Doug
 
Can you elaborate on the material and thickness? Can you not get close to the tap drill size with the laser or are you hitting specified tolerances? We tap waterjetted holes in steel and aluminum routinely. Depending on material and thickness once you were on a something like a GR-510 it might be worth just finishing the part that way, you'd obviously get a better finish. I'm sure you could do what you're describing but it seems odd and uncommon. I'd be keen to hear what others think though.
 
We routinely Punch "Multi-Blanks" in the Turret punching the Hole +.003/-.000 and then use a Double Counter Sink Coin Tool (up and Down). We mark the Blank where the Clamps go and cut a Notch for the X Stop for the next operations.

The Blanks are then taken to an old Amada NC Tapping Machine and Tapped. Using the Clamp Locations and Notch to locate.

From there we take them over to an Amada 1212 Pulsar using the same locators and Laser the profile.

We have done this with up to 1/4 HRP&O.

I would love to have a NC Tap Machine that can handle a bigger sheet than the Amada. The Amada is from the early 80's and it keeps going. We have 2 of them in service.

Your concept has merit and should work. Just have to make sure you have consistent X and Y Stops between operations.
 
Thanks for the advice! I double checked with our fab supervisor and the parts we tap are in the 0.25 to 0.5" thick range with 1/4, 3/8 and 1/2" threaded holes. We also frequently counter sink or counter bore holes in these steel sheets. We do cut lots of 1/16 and 1/8 thick sheet but rarely tap them.

I guess using x and y stops should be feasible. Our Trumpf uses a camera to locate the sheet now so I forgot about using mechanical stops.
 








 
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