As an advanced sheet metal processing technology and means, laser cutting machines are rapidly and widely adopted in various industries of industrial machinery due to their significant advantages such as high efficiency, high precision, and high flexibility, and have also attracted the attention of more and more industry applications. After more than 40 years of continuous development, laser cutting machines have become increasingly mature. So how will they develop in the future? What is its development trend? Against the backdrop of China's ambition to achieve the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry and intelligent manufacturing, the above two issues are particularly worth exploring.
 

In order to gain a better understanding of the current situation of laser cutting machines, we may wish to summarize and analyze them from the following aspects.

(1) Laser cutting machines have achieved a revolutionary product revolution since 2008, and a revolution in laser cutting machine light sources has begun. Now, 10 years have passed, and high-power CO2 laser cutting machines have fallen into the abyss of severe decline. The epoch-making fiber laser cutting machine, with its higher cutting efficiency, lower operating costs, and wider cutting range, occupies the center of the global laser cutting machine stage.

This light source technological revolution has brought greater return on investment to end users and billions of dollars of industrial value chain to the market. In recent years, among the industrial lasers produced and sold globally for laser processing, laser cutting has surpassed laser welding, laser marking, laser texturing, laser heat treatment, and laser cladding, and is much more numerous than other industrial lasers.

This demonstrates the extremely important technological application status of laser cutting technology and also indicates that laser cutting machines have extremely eye-catching development space. This is the most important technological revolution since the birth of the laser cutting machine.

(2) High, medium, and low power fiber laser cutting machines are developing side by side. Due to the marginalization of CO2 laser cutting machines in production and sales, the laser cutting machines we will talk about here are all fiber laser cutting machines. In the past five years, 300-1000W medium and low power fiber laser cutting machines, 1000-3000W high-power fiber laser cutting machines, and 3000W and above high-power fiber laser cutting machines have achieved rapid development in their respective fields due to their different cutting capabilities. It can be said that they are advancing together and fully blooming and bearing fruit. This is also the best proof of the era of fiber laser cutting machines.

(3) Is the automation level of laser cutting machines significantly improved? Is laser cutting machines just a precision sheet metal cutting equipment? Yes, of course not all. In the first twenty years since the birth of laser cutting machines, they have gone through a relatively long path of product stability.

During this process and thereafter, laser cutting machines developed towards application specialization, such as template laser cutting machines, laser cloth cutting machines, tube laser  cutting machines, flat laser cutting machines, robot 3D laser cutting machines, 3D five axis laser cutting machines, etc., which have all been finalized products to this day. But at the same time, it cannot be ignored that laser cutting machines are making strides towards automation.

For a laser cutting machine, its equipped auxiliary units such as automatic loading, automatic unloading, automatic slag removal, and automatic picking can effectively reduce labor intensity, reduce the number of workers, shorten standby time, and even achieve unmanned laser cutting operations, thereby comprehensively improving the application rate of laser cutting machines.

In fact, well-known laser cutting machine manufacturers with extensive global influence are all vigorously investing in practice here, occupying a leading position in the development of laser cutting machine automation and leading the development and application direction of laser cutting machines.

What inspiration can the current situation of laser cutting machines summarized from the above three aspects bring us? Is the future development direction and trend of laser cutting machines really hidden within it? So, let's stand at the moment and overlook the future of laser cutting machines.

About HGTECH

HGTECH is the pioneer and leader of laser industrial application in China, and the authoritative provider of global laser processing solutions. We comprehensively layout the construction of laser intelligent equipment, measurement and automation production lines, and smart factories to provide an overall solution for intelligent manufacturing.

We deeply grasp the development trend of manufacturing industry, constantly enrich products and solutions, adhere to exploring the integration of automation, informatization, intelligence and manufacturing industry, and provide various industries with laser cutting systems, laser welding systems, laser marking series, laser texturing complete equipment, laser heat treatment systems, laser drilling machines, lasers and various supporting devices The overall plan for the construction of special laser processing equipment and plasma cutting equipment, as well as automatic production lines and smart factories.