Engineering.com spoke with Ray Feliciano, Laser Support Engineer at FANUC, about the company’s Fiber Laser. The laser is designed for high-speed specialized cutting and marking of exotic materials such as stainless steel tubing.
Lot and part traceability is increasingly becoming a priority for manufacturers—and marking the part is often a separate operation than manufacturing the part. FANUC’s laser responds to that demand with a laser that can not only cut with precision but can also imprint detailed etchings with exceptional edge quality. And it can do so at 432,000 millimeters a minute.
This is very promising for mass production, auto parts, consumer goods, and “any industry that requires any kind of QR code or bar code technology,” said Feliciano.
The accompanying video demonstrates the machine’s etching capability, using the laser’s heat to imprint a polished FANUC logo on a stainless steel pipe.
As you might expect from a company well known for its robotics, the laser cutting process can be automated and integrated into robotic manufacturing processes. The laser can be programmed with standard G code—with the capability of inputting cutting condition data with E codes as well. It cuts and etches at high speed and in real time, with a power range of 500 watts to 6 kilowatts.
Read and watch about FANUC’s robotics products at Video: Latest Pick and Place Robotics: Vision-Integrated, Flexible and Fast.