How did laser technology disrupt the steel pipe cutting industry?

Material cutting is currently the segment with the largest share of laser applications in my country, most of which are laser cutting applications for medium and high power metal materials. Of course, this includes daily major metals such as stainless steel, carbon steel, copper, and aluminum, of which stainless steel and carbon steel account for the largest proportion.

Sheet cutting turns to laser tube cutting

The domestic development of laser metal cutting is in full swing, from YAG lasers, CO2 lasers to fiber lasers, from 500 watts to 20,000 watts of cutting equipment, it has only been more than ten years. Nowadays, the development of domestic laser cutting equipment is relatively mature, and the power has basically solved most of the application requirements. In the plane cutting of sheet metal, more than 600 companies have made related equipment, and even reached the market pattern of fierce competition and price competition.

Two-dimensional sheet cutting has entered the era of small profits, forcing many laser cutting equipment companies to find another way out, looking for new growth points, new application scenarios, and greater profit margins. At this time, the wave of metal laser cutting happened to spread to the field of metal pipe cutting.

Since about 2018, domestic companies mainly engaged in laser cutting equipment have launched new pipe cutting machines, including Han's, Hongshan, Huagong, Leading, Parkson, Longxin, Tianhong, Qingyuan, Xunlei, and Bond , Jiatai and so on.

In fact, laser tube cutting is not new. Several domestic companies have launched similar products many years ago, but the application of tube cutting was less discovered at that time, and the equipment was expensive, and it was not widely promoted. In the past, the cutting was a CO2 laser. Nowadays, fiber laser cutting is common. Many companies have hindered the growth of flat panel cutting machines, increased competition, and entered the era of small profits, so they turned to pipe cutting machines. Currently, there are still certain profits, and companies are willing to do it. Even many companies continue to promote new technologies and new functions in pipe cutting, including plate and tube integrated cutting machines, three-chuck pipe cutting machines, automatic feeding and picking pipe cutting machines, etc.

Steel pipes are used in all walks of life

Metal pipes are widely used in different industries. General pipes are usually 10 meters or even 20 meters long before they are formed. After being distributed to various industries, they need to be processed into parts of different shapes and sizes to meet the needs of different industries due to different application scenarios. The three main processes of metal pipes are: cutting, bending and welding.

In 2019, my country's steel pipe output was 84.176 million tons, an increase of 8.7% year-on-year, accounting for more than 50% of the world's total output. my country is also the world's largest steel pipe consumer. Steel pipes generally include surface-treated ordinary steel pipes and stainless steel pipes. In practical applications, the work demand for pipe cutting is very large.

Steel pipes are widely used in water supply and drainage and liquid gas transportation projects. Nowadays, most cold water supply systems use plastic pipes. In electric power, engineering construction steel frame structure, home construction, door and window guardrail, automobile/bicycle/motorcycle, agricultural machinery, sports facilities, etc., almost most industrial sectors use steel pipes in large quantities. In recent years, the application of stainless steel pipes in sanitary ware and furniture has attracted particular attention.

Bathrooms (left) and furniture (right) use stainless steel pipes extensively

(Image source: Teyu Electromechanical)

Advantages of laser tube cutting

In the past, traditional stainless steel pipe cutting mostly used saw blade cutting, from manual to semi-automatic, and then to fully automatic. The saw blade cutting technology has reached the ceiling, and the pipe cutting efficiency cannot be improved. At this time, laser tube cutting technology began to enter the pipe industry, which is very suitable for cutting various metal pipes. It has the characteristics of high automation, high efficiency and high output. For pipes of different materials, there is no need to replace the corresponding saw blades, anyway. It is "one size fits all", no need to stop in the middle, very suitable for mass production.

Traditional pipe cutting saw blade (picture source: Guangdong Jettech)

The emergence of laser tube cutting soon brought a subversive change to the original metal tube industry cutting process. Laser cutting has quickly replaced many traditional and low-efficiency mechanical cutting. Nowadays, laser pipe cutting machines continue to add new functions, such as automatic feeding, clamping, rotation, and bevel cutting, suitable for round pipes, square pipes, flat pipes, etc. Laser cutting meets almost all requirements for pipe cutting.

In terms of efficiency, according to a tube cutting manufacturer, a stainless steel tube was cut into sections. The original saw blade required 15 seconds to cut a section of the tube. Now laser cutting is completed in less than 2 seconds, which has increased the efficiency by nearly 10 times. The most important thing is that a saw blade worth hundreds or even hundreds of dollars is generally worn out after more than 1,000 cuts and needs to be replaced. Laser cutting can almost be regarded as an infinite cutting. At this point, mechanical tools can save a lot of costs. .

For my country's hundreds of billions of metal pipe market, the laser cutting pipe process has only just begun a few years, and the future opportunities for traditional replacement are huge. In addition, there will be a lot of room for pipe bending and pipe welding after pipe cutting.

Water chiller for laser pipe cutting machine

Guangzhou Teyu Electromechanical specializes in providing cooling equipment products for laser applications, and its laser chiller product shipments rank first in the world. For continuous fiber laser cutting applications, Teyu Electromechanical currently offers special chillers ranging from 500 watts to 20,000 watts. Aiming at the 1000 watt laser used in laser tube cutting machines, the company has a corresponding CWFL-1000 chiller, which has suitable products for different powers.

Teyu's fiber chiller can cool the laser and QBH connector at the same time. It adopts dual-temperature dual-control mode to provide users with effective temperature control solutions in all directions, and is widely favored in the field of laser tube cutting.