High-dynamic form cutter HDFC6060

State-of-the-art laser sources have considerably lifted the limits of cutting speed dependent on material thickness and performance. Innovative solidstate lasers, such as fibre lasers and disc lasers, realise significant higher cutting speeds in comparison to CO2 lasers at the same output power. However, this potential cannot be transferred into contour cuts by conventional cutting machines, due to dynamic limitations. Particularly for workpiece geometries with many direction changes, high acceleration and jerk values of the axes are necessary. The jerk describes the temporal increase of acceleration (in m s-3). Together with the acceleration, it is the decisive parameter to increase the average processing speed in contour cutting.

In order to convert the cutting capacity of modern laser sources into contour cutting, an innovative movement concept can be provided with the highdynamic HDFC6060 form cutter. As a result, current limits of machine dynamics are overcome. With help of a parallel kinematic axle structure, the moving masses for beam and cutting gas movement can be reduced to a considerable degree. Consequently, the dynamic properties in 3 dimensions can be increased significantly. The average processing speed can be doubled on many workpiece geometries
or the cutting time can be halved. Seen individually, the HDFC6060 is a fully-fledged machine. It is suitable for the high-productive mass production of complex components in the available working area.

Through consistent use of standard interfaces, HDFC systems can be directly integrated into existing machine controls. For a stand-alone operation or coupling with different control systems, which do not offer sufficient openness for integration, the flexible programming and control environment REDcut is offered by Fraunhofer IWS.

Contour programming occurs in standard G-code or through a CAM interface. Customer-specific process parameters, which are stored in technology databases, can be allocated to the parts programme. This ensures short set-up times and consistent quality when assignments change.

The PC-based control environment, which works in the background, offers a multitude of different input and output interfaces for communication and synchronisation with superordinate procedures and to control the necessary technical functions (laser, gases, sensors, parts handling, etc.).