How to find the best laser cutting company in Melbourne?
For most Australians, finding the best laser cutting company in Melbourne can be a tedious task. It’s not just the price you pay for their services, but the fact that the service you have purchased will impact the output you are looking for. If you aren’t happy with the company you’ve chosen, you can switch to another one. But to help avoid jumping one company to another, you must learn how to find the best one. This guide can help you decide on making a capital decision that will drive your business to new heights.
What is a Laser Cutting Company?
A laser cutting company is basically a company that offers laser cutting service. While it’s historically been servicing large-scale industries, it’s recently gained popularity for smaller industries as the selection of tools and services widens.
Laser cutting is a hot cutting process used to cut materials such as steel, wood or plastic. CNC laser cutter service providers usually use a carbon dioxide laser to perform the low-distortion hot cutting. The cut produced by a laser is actually an energy transfer that causes the material to melt or burn along the line.
Service Offered by a Laser Cutting Company
When looking for the best laser cutting company, one of the things you should be looking at is the services they offer. Some offer custom laser cutting while others offer different services. You also need to check if they offer the services you need and their laser cutter price. Here are the services offered by a laser cutting company:
Bending of sheet metal is a common laser cutting service. In a nutshell, sheet metal bending is the plastic deformation of the work over an axis, creating a change in the material’s geometry. Akin to other metal forming processes, bending changes the shape of the work-piece, while the volume of material remain the same.
In some cases, bending may produce a minor change in sheet thickness. In regards to most operations, bending will produce basically no change in the thickness of the sheet metal. Aside from creating a desire geometric form, bending is also used to impart strength and stiffness to sheet metal, to change a part’s moment of inertia, for the cosmetic appearance and to eliminate sharp edges.
If you are in need of signages for your business, this is the kind of service you will be needing from a laser cutting company. Laser-cut signage is a service for creating signs that have a clean and detailed finish. The company is capable of cutting smaller sizes than routing and gives a fantastic polished edge to lettering, panels, logos.
Laser cutters are an easy solution for making signages. Lasers can cut and engrave designs from flat sheet materials such as metal, wood, or acrylic. The outcome is always pixel perfect and depending on the material used, a little bit three-dimensional. This makes the signs look really professional.
Anodising is a service offered in a laser cutting company. Anodising is an electrochemical process that can transform any metal surface to a long-lasting, decorative, and anodic oxide finish. Aluminium is a material ideally suited to anodising. Although other nonferrous metals, like magnesium and titanium, can also be anodised.
Anodising is done by immersing the aluminium into an acid electrolyte bath and then passing an electric current through its medium. Inserted to the inside of the anodising tank is a cathode; which will make the aluminium acts as an anode so that the oxygen ions are released from the electrolyte then is mixed with the aluminium atoms at the surfaces of the part being anodised. That’s why, anodising is a matter of highly controlled oxidation, the enhancement of a naturally occurring phenomenon.
Powder coating is simply a dry finish method of painting. It works by applying powder metals using a process called electrostatic spray deposition (ESD) with a powder coating gun. Once the metal has been sprayed on, it is put in the oven to allow the powder to fuse it. Although it is applied mainly on metal objects, it can be used on some plastics and medium-density fibreboard.
A laser cutting company should offer a galvanising service. Galvanising is one of the most widely used methods for protecting metals from corrosion. This process involves the application of a thin coat of zinc to a thicker base metal, which acts as a shield from the surrounding environment. If you have noticed the street signs and lamp posts, a large number of them have a mute, silver colour on them. That silver colour is actually the coating of zinc.
This laser cutting service is a Substractive Manufacturing method, that uses a laser beam to change the surface of an object. This method is mostly used to create images on the material that may be seen at eye level. This can be done by using laser to create high heat that will vaporise the matter, thus exposing cavities that will form the final image.
It uses the laser for making the surface of an item. This process is quick, as the material is removed with each pulse of the laser.
What Materials Do Laser Cutting Company Cut?
A cnc laser cutter company can cut all types of steel, aluminium, timber, and plastics such as:
- Cleancut Stainless steels that are 0.1 to 10mm thick
- Mild steels up to 16mm thickness
- Aluminium up to 5mm
- Acrylic up to 25mm with a flame polished edge
- Wood – MDF and plywood up to 30mm thick
- Other plastics ( such as HIPS, Corian, etc.) and foam but not PVC
- Other materials viz.rubber, leather
Conclusion
To find the best laser cutting company in Melbourne, you need to check what services they offer and what kind of materials can accommodate. Although a laser cutter price may vary, choosing the best one can help you achieve the output you envisioned.
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