The "maker revolution", such as it is, is driven by laser cutters. They're accurate, fast, reliable, work on large sheets, and have no consumables.
We're pushing 14 bar of 99.8% purity nitrogen through our 4kW fibre laser cutter to cut up to 12mm thick stainless steel.
Regular mild steel is reactive cut with 0.4 bar of oxygen and a trickle of nitrogen for lense cooling.
We go through 110 cubic meters of nitrogen on a slow week. We've got a 1400 litre liquid nitrogen bulk tank and 3500 litre liquid oxygen bulk tank.
If you bought a laser cutter earlier you probably have a CO2 laser so there's another consumable.
And we're getting slogged on lenses and protective glass windows. That's how they get you, the long tail of proprietary parts. I need to find a cheaper supplier of parts, but do you really want to put aftermarket lenses in your bosses one million dollar laser cutter?
To add to that, laser cutters are bloody dirty. Our machine is fully enclosed with a large (4 meter high) external dust extractor and self clean filters. The ultra fine dust that collects in the hopper is not something you want to be breathing.
And then theres the tons and tons of oxydized steel waste, stainless steel dross, and scrap that fall through that has to be sent for recycling but no one will take when the scrap prices are low like they are now.
Pretty sure the parent is talking about cutting acrylic, wood, etc. At my last job we had a small epilog laser and it was fairly low maintenance. Metal cutting is another world entirely, for sure.
We're pushing 14 bar of 99.8% purity nitrogen through our 4kW fibre laser cutter to cut up to 12mm thick stainless steel.
Regular mild steel is reactive cut with 0.4 bar of oxygen and a trickle of nitrogen for lense cooling.
We go through 110 cubic meters of nitrogen on a slow week. We've got a 1400 litre liquid nitrogen bulk tank and 3500 litre liquid oxygen bulk tank.
If you bought a laser cutter earlier you probably have a CO2 laser so there's another consumable.
And we're getting slogged on lenses and protective glass windows. That's how they get you, the long tail of proprietary parts. I need to find a cheaper supplier of parts, but do you really want to put aftermarket lenses in your bosses one million dollar laser cutter?