Laser can achieve processing effect with its high energy and material. The easiest application of laser beam is metal material, and it is also the most mature market for development and application at present, mainly including general iron plate, carbon steel, stainless steel, copper, aluminum alloy, etc. kind. Iron plates and carbon steels are mostly used as metal frame parts, such as automobiles, construction machinery components, transmission pipelines, etc., which require high-power cutting and welding. Stainless steel is commonly used in bathrooms, kitchen utensils, knives, etc., and the thickness requirements are not high, and medium-power lasers are sufficient.
my country’s housing and various infrastructure projects are developing rapidly, and various building materials are used in large quantities. For example, my country uses half of the world’s cement and is also the country that uses the largest amount of steel. Building materials can be described as one of the pillar industries of my country’s economy. Building materials need a lot of processing, so what applications can laser technology have in building materials?
At present, hydraulic shearing or grinding machines are mainly used for rebar and iron bars used in building foundations or structures. At present, lasers are mostly used in pipes and doors and windows.
Laser processing of metal pipes
Pipes on building materials are used for water pipes, gas/natural gas pipes, sewage pipes, fence pipes, etc. The metal ones include galvanized steel pipes and stainless steel pipes.
With the expectations of the strength and aesthetics of pipes in the construction industry, the requirements for pipe cutting have also increased. Ordinary pipes are usually 10 meters or even 20 meters long before leaving the factory. After they are distributed to various industries, due to different application scenarios, they need to be processed into parts of different shapes and sizes to meet the needs of different industries.
Laser tube cutting technology has quickly entered the tube industry, which is very suitable for the cutting of various metal tubes and has the characteristics of high automation, high efficiency and high output. The thickness of metal pipes for building materials is generally less than 3mm, and the laser power of 1000 watts is sufficient for cutting, and high-speed cutting can be achieved by using more than 3000 watts of power. In the past, the grinding wheel cutting machine took about 20 seconds to cut a section of stainless steel pipe, while the laser cutting only took 2 seconds, which greatly improved the efficiency. Therefore, in the past four or five years, laser pipe cutting equipment has replaced many traditional mechanical knife cutting.
The emergence of the tube laser cutting process can automatically complete the traditional sawing, punching, drilling and other processes on one machine, and can cut, open holes, contour cutting and pattern character cutting of the tube. The tube laser cutting process only needs Input the required specifications into the computer, and the equipment can automatically, quickly and efficiently complete the cutting task. Automatic feeding, clamping, rotation, bevel cutting, suitable for round tubes, square tubes, flat tubes, etc. Laser cutting almost meets all the requirements of tube cutting and realizes an efficient processing mode.
Door and window application
Doors and windows are an important part of China’s real estate construction industry. All houses need doors and windows. Due to the huge demand in the door and window industry, as the production cost of doors and windows increases year by year, people also put forward higher requirements for the processing efficiency and quality of door and window products.
Doors and windows, anti-theft nets, railings, etc. use a lot of stainless steel, mainly steel plates and round cans with a thickness of less than 2mm. At the cutting end, laser technology can achieve high-quality cutting, hollowing, and pattern cutting of stainless steel plates and round cans. Nowadays, hand-held laser welding is very convenient. The metal parts used for doors and windows can be seamlessly welded, and there will no longer be gaps and bumps like spot welding, making the overall performance of doors and windows better and more beautiful.
The annual consumption of doors and windows, anti-theft nets and guardrails is very large, and cutting and welding can be realized by using small and medium laser power. However, since most of these products are customized according to the size of the house, and are undertaken by small door and window installation stores or decoration companies, the most traditional grinding wheel cutting, arc welding, flame welding, etc. are currently used in the mainstream. The space for laser processing to replace traditional processes is very large.
Possibilities of laser processing of non-metallic building materials
Non-metals on building materials mainly include ceramics, stone, and glass. These processing are mainly grinding wheels and mechanical knives, which are completely dependent on manual operation and manual positioning. When cutting, large dust, debris, and disturbing noise will be generated. The potential harm to the human body is extremely great, and now more and more young people are willing to do it.
These three building materials have the possibility of chipping and cracking. The laser processing of glass has been developed. The composition of glass is silicate, quartz, etc., and it is easy to react with the laser beam to achieve the cutting effect. There are many glass processing methods. Explore. For ceramics and stone, laser cutting is rarely considered at present and needs to be further explored. If you find a suitable wavelength and power laser, you can also try to cut ceramics and stone materials, and achieve less dust and noise-free cutting. I hope that domestic enterprises will try to make breakthroughs in the future.
In residential construction sites, or infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges, and tracks, many materials need to be laid on-site at the construction site, and the workpiece processing of laser equipment is often limited to the workshop, and then the workpieces are transported to the second place for application. Therefore, exploring how laser equipment can be processed in real-time on-site in application scenarios may be an important direction for future laser development.
For example, argon arc welding can be popular and widely used. In addition to low cost, its equipment is very portable, has low power requirements, high equipment stability, and strong scene adaptability. It can be pulled to the site for processing at any time. In this regard, the emergence of hand-held laser welding provides the possibility for laser exploration applications on-site processing. Hand-held laser welding equipment and chillers can now be integrated and more compact, and can be used on construction sites.
The rusting of metal parts is a very troublesome problem. If the rust is not dealt with in time, the product will be scrapped. The development of laser cleaning has made rust removal more efficient, the cost of single processing consumption is lower, and rust removal has become simpler. Provide laser cleaning professional door-to-door service to deal with workpieces that cannot be moved, and require equipment to be cleaned on site, which may be a direction for the development of laser cleaning. Vehicle-mounted mobile laser cleaning equipment has been successfully developed by a company in Nanjing, and some companies have also developed backpack-type cleaning machines before, which can realize on-site cleaning for building exterior walls, canopies, steel frame structures, etc., and laser cleaning on-site processing. Offers new options.