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I have a 4kw IPG laser. It cuts through 1/4 steel plate with ease, unless there is a piece of tape or spray paint on the metal. It can't cut that! it has to do
by gregpilling 9y ago
I have a 4kw IPG laser. It cuts through 1/4 steel plate with ease, unless there is a piece of tape or spray paint on the metal. It can't cut that! it has to do with how the wavelength of the light couples with the material. (I am not a laser engineer, I am the customer)
The 4kw power supply only is $128,000 if you want a cost reference,(just the power supply - motion control, cutting head and chiller are extra). It is an 8 module unit of 500 watts each, that can be powered down to 50w each if wanted, with full frequency and duty cycle control of the beam. It is about 48"x48"x18" and plugs into a 460v 30A 3Ph circuit. There is a chiller the size of a refrigerator to keep it cool.
100kw like in the article would cost roughly $3.2M for the light source only.
There were 20 kw lasers mounted to 7 axis ABB robot arms when I visited the IPG factory in November, being used for welding. The fiber optic cable was the size of a garden hose and terminated at the end of the robot arm in a tool changer mount. It could tool change from cutting laser head to welding head.
- archon810 9y agoWhy... do you have that?
- ggm 9y agoBecause of his second amendment rights.
- sorokod 9y agoThe right to bear robot arms with lasers?
- ggm 9y agoThat's the one. John Hancock used one to burn his big bold signature onto the sheepskin
- some_random 9y agoIt's the amendment that protects the rest. Specifically, you'll be vaporized by it if you try to grab it out of the display.
- grzm 9y agoFrom your parent's comment and their profile, I'd wager $1 that it's an industrial laser, likely used for welding and cutting.
- gregpilling 9y agoFor evil purposes. Or for cutting steel and making auto parts.
- cheeze 9y agoThis comment is a perfect example of why I love hn. Article about thing that I know a small amount about but have mild interest in? Go to comments and find guy with big ass laser!
- samplatt 9y agoReddit used to be like that; it was the main reason I switched from Digg ~10 years ago.
- riffraff 9y agoIt still is, in some subs, just not the overly popular or poorly moderated
- xiphias 9y agoR/science has some amazing comments
- sake 9y agor/linux was recently having some laissez-faire experiment where there was minimal to no moderation for one week. Everyone was like "hey, nobody discovered major vulnerabilities in one week, moderation has no function!" No moderation on anonymous forums certainly seem to attract the brightest and shiniest individuals together. Cough.
- hinkley 9y agoSo... we can protect tanks and planes from laser weapons by putting scotch tape on them??
- black_puppydog 9y agoOr spray paint! Guess the glorious days of bare brushed metal tanks are over. :(
- hinkley 9y agoBanksy will save us all!
- sorokod 9y agoFirst active armour plates, then scotch tape.
- thawkins 9y agoOr mirroring, shiney tanks....
- samplatt 9y ago4KW power supply for $128k? I understand a lot of engineering went into making that & needs to be recouped, but it still sounds on the high side. I wonder how hard it'd be to build one, if required.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- adrianratnapala 9y agoMight depend on what he means by "power supply". For a purely electrical thing it does sound expensive unless there is a stringent low-noise requirement (which would surprise me in an industrial laser). The lasers I've heard of work by amplifying light along a fibre that has been energised by some other light source -- and that light source is sometimes also a laser. So in this case the "power supply" might actually be thing that produces 10-20kW of light (of which only some is converted into laser light along the fibre).
- jakeogh 9y agoIt's the current regulation and all the snazzy PWM.
- krapht 9y agoEven so, 128k is a bit excessive. They're definitely charging the enterprise/business markup for that power.
- argyleaf 9y agoNot really given the highly integrated nature of laser manufacturers where they bundle the table, drives, CNC, material handling, power supply, and (often) SLA together. Additionally there is a lower run-rate of consumables in comparison to other industrial cutting technologies so the life-time cost is more comparable to competing technologies. So why not always use laser? They have far higher upfront costs as their business model is not consumable-driven. Further they are limited in material thickness and finish they can handle. They are great at cutting sheet and thin (<= 1/4") metals, when the surface is clean and uniform as mentioned above, but if your shop needs the ability to cut thicker materials or the up-front cost is too high then plasma, oxy-fuel, or (possibly) waterjet are better options.
- tpurves 9y agoThis reminds me of all I could think about watching the new star wars films. Why don’t all the storm troopers get to have the shiny mirrored suits. Those pesky rebels and their lasers blasters would just bounce off. check mate empire.
- taneq 9y agoThe thing that gets me is they have holographic displays but they can't figure out that it's a bad idea putting the pilot of a military ship right at the front with their head sticking out.
- codeulike 9y agoOr they can build robots that are clearly sentient but they don't bother giving them a voice.
- azeotropic 9y agoDo you ever downvote comments or collapse threads? Maybe R2 units are just constantly incoherent, off-topic, or abusive.
- 220V_USKettle 9y agoIn fairness, we have no idea what the IP licensing schemes are like for text-to-speech technology in that galaxy.
- taneq 9y agoActually the treatment of sentient droids in those movies is one of the sour points for me, rewatching it now. Somehow it's OK to just wipe a droid's memories, or dismantle it, when it's just as much a 'person' as any of the organic characters. Blah.
- codeulike 9y agoIn Sci-Fi terms the Star Wars approach to AI is nonsensical. You have sentient droids that are treated as possesions/slaves/butlers but there's no AI except for the droids, no spaceships that fly themselves or superintelligent AI minds or anything. And the aforementioned lack of voice for some droids. But in cinematic terms the R2D2/C3PO double-act does make for some funny exchanges, so I guess that's what they were going for. So its kindof tropes first, world-building afterwards as an afterthought.
- mehrdadn 9y agoLike this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMSyGOoesfM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMSyGOoesfM
- agumonkey 9y agoif you want some fun there's https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=laser+rust+removal https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=laser+rust+remo...
- gregpilling 9y agoYes, same power unit, but I have the IPG motion control and machine, not a Prima. The Prima was more than double the total cost of mine. That machine in the video can hit $1,000,000 with options. Also it is super cool.
- jacquesm 9y agoThat's one sweet rig. What do you make with it?
- jlebrech 9y agocouldn't you just switch frequency?