b'Steel Beams ShineFarmington,Connecticut.And whilenotquiteasaccurateas chip-producing machines, he said lasers provide good cutting accu-racy, along with high productivity.So generally, he said, peo-ple are focused primarily on laser cutting because of the throughput they can get.Lasers are an especially attractive option for those trying to meet the challenges of micromachining steel, said Attila Farkas, sales and mar-keting analyst at Microlution Inc., a Chicago-headquartered subsidiary of GF Machining Solutions LLC. Mi-crolution sells turnkey laser-based packages for machining very small features, such as holes with diame-ters of about 30 m (0.001"). He said trying to cut these microscale fea-tures with conventional tools results in a good deal of costly tool break-age. And while electrical dischargestacking is a loss of repeat-machining works well for steel mi- ability, so to maintain tight cromachining, he said, there aretolerances, many high-end tool consumption costs that are notwatchmakersdontstack incurred when cutting with a laser. materials for cutting.Whatsmore,usingEDMtoWith a laser, he said, you shape a small hole requires an ini- mighthaveahigherini-tial drilling operation, which addstial cost, but youre going more time to the process, as well asto make the parts faster if an additional machine. youre not stacking them, With a laser, however, not only canand you get higher quality.you create the hole in solid steel, butSarrafi said time and cost then you can shape the hole to theMicrolution savings are key reasons that final size, said Eric Ostini, head ofOnly a laser was needed to produce 200 m-dia. holeslasers have been replacing business development at GF Machin- in this steel part. punch cutters in the pro-ing Solutions in Lincolnshire, Illinois. duction of steel parts. He At IMTS last month, one item dis- It might take three hours to donoted that laser machines can han-played by the company was a steela spinneret between milling and andle changes in part materials and spinneret die. Traditionally, the jobEDM, Ostini said, whereas a laserthickness without any setup or tool-of creating the small slotted holes incan reduce that to minutes. ing costs. Instead, all that users the spinneret required both millingFarkas said lasers have a big ad- need to do is to change the pro-and EDM machines, he said. Now,vantage over wire EDM in bothcess parameters in the controller. though, a single laser machine iscycle time and quality when usedSimilarly, changes in part geome-all thats needed. Besides eliminat- to make highly precise steel watchtry are made quickly using what he ing a machine from the process, hegears. EDM, he noted, can havecalls soft tooling.pointed out that the laser does itsa cost and cycle time advantageIn modern high-power laser ma-work much faster than the two ma- if the gear materials to be cut arechines, you can go from a CAD chines combined. stacked.Butanotherresultofdrawing to cut parts in less than five 16OCTOBER 2022 LaserMachining.indd 16 9/19/22 11:36 AM'