Fiber laser orbital cutting of stainless steel tubes

Fiber laser cutting of metallic materials has been studied in numerous occasions for the past few years. Most of the research done in this field has been focused on one or two-dimensional vertical cutting of sheet metals. In those applications fiber laser seems to gain considerable market share within next few years by providing lower energy consumption and lower maintenance costs.Different industrial aspects have shown an increasing interest in laser cutting of tube, profiles and tubes. Conventional CO2-laser laser tube cutting machines are excellent in their normal tasks but can not fulfill the requirements set for some applications. Some applications of tube cutting are such that vertical cutting position can not be used all around the tube. Also in some cases the tube to be cut can not be rotated for some reason. In these situations the only reasonable cutting method is orbital cutting. Similar cases do exist also in case of cutting large vessels and other box structures after final assembly welding.P...