b'Laser turning can create steel parts with very small diameters.minutes, he said. And with prob- need to tweak the recipes once set lems of tool and die wear elimi- for a certain material.nated, you can understand how at- On the other hand, Sarrafi said tractive laser cutting can be today. punch machines sometimes have In addition, Sarrafi pointed outan edge over laserstypically that laser cutting is noncontact, sowhen producing large quantities of a laser can be thought of as abladeparts with relatively simple geome-that never dulls. tries. In those cases, upfront tooling High-quality fiber lasers are socosts may be justified to punch out reliable that a cutting recipe (al- multiple parts very fast. Laser ma-ways) will cut with the same speedchining, by contrast, is a profile cut-and quality, he said, so theres noting process and can be slower in those situations, he said, depend-ing on laser power.about the authorLaser DrawbacksWilliam LeventonCompared with other cutting is a contributingoptions, lasers are also at a dis-writer for CTE.advantage when it comes to up-Contact him atfront costs. Consider, for example, 609-920-3335 or wleventon@ femtosecond lasersadvanced la-gmail.com. sers with pulse durations of about a MicrolutionHIGHEST PRECISION FOR MOST DEMANDING APPLICATIONSState-of-the-art and trendsetting high-tech solutions for various induriesfor over 100 years.www.agathon.comctemag.com/cteguide.com17LaserMachining.indd 17 9/19/22 11:36 AM'