5 Benefits of Using Laser Cutting in the Automotive Industry | Xometry

Laser cutting is a highly efficient and versatile technology that has revolutionized the automotive industry. It offers a range of benefits that have led to its widespread use. Laser cutters are used in a variety of applications in the automotive industry, including cutting plastic parts, fabricating metal components, and marking and engraving parts for identification and branding.  This makes the automotive industry more efficient and cost-effective.

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This article highlights the five benefits of using laser cutting in the automotive industry. These benefits include: precision and clean cuts, versatility in cutting a wide range of materials, compactness, fast processing, high-quality results, and the ability to engrave materials in a single operation.

1. Laser Cutting Produces Clean, Precise Cuts

Laser cutters use a high-density heat source for cutting, which results in precise and clean cuts. CO₂ lasers typically operate at a wavelength of 10.6 microns (10,600 nm), not 10,000 nm. Precision cutting occurs when the metal absorbs laser energy, causing rapid localized melting that enables clean and accurate cuts. The beam parameter product (BPP) is also used to assess the laser beam quality. The Beam Parameter Product (BPP) for CO₂ lasers is typically measured in mm·mrad, not mm. Values usually range from 2.5 to 4 mm·mrad for industrial CO₂ lasers. This, along with the intensely concentrated heat, accounts for the cut’s near-perfect quality and the method's widespread use in the automotive industry.

Laser cutters are particularly ideal for cutting and sealing airbags. They are frequently used for cutting and sealing airbag materials due to their non-contact operation and precision. The laser cutter’s powerful and precisely focused heat is the primary advantage in sealing airbags.

2. Laser Cutting Is Incredibly Versatile and Can Cut a Wide Range of Materials

Laser cutters move precisely to cut the outlines that have been programmed into the laser cutting machine since their cutting heads are CNC-controlled. This is an extremely useful technology for the automobile sector because it enables the consistent production of complex components with minimal manual intervention. This also gives this technology the advantage of being versatile in design flexibility and complexity.

Lasers can process a broad range of automotive materials, supporting complex geometries and multi-material assemblies. Laser-processed components can be found throughout both the exterior and interior of modern vehicles, particularly in body panels, fabrics, and trim elements. Today, lasers are widely used throughout many stages of automotive production, from prototyping and component fabrication to marking and quality assurance.

The compactness of laser cutters is a key factor in their widespread use and popularity in the automotive industry. The use of the laser cutting machine becomes a crucial output-to-space efficiency for vehicle manufacturers because it is relatively small in comparison to its throughput.

The compact nature of laser cutters allows for easy integration into a manufacturing line. The machines take up minimal space and free up valuable floor space for other equipment. Smaller laser systems are available for prototyping or trimming non-metal components, while industrial laser cutters used in automotive production typically require dedicated floor space and support systems.

4. Laser Cutting Machines Process Quickly and Produce High-Quality Results

Laser cutters are known for their rapid processing speed, making them well-suited for high-throughput automotive production. They are known for their fast operation and ability to maintain tight tolerances across repeated parts. These advantages make laser cutters ideal for streamlining automotive part fabrication—from prototyping and development to full-scale production.

In automotive production, lasers are often combined with robotic arms or multi-axis systems to cut or trim complex 3D-formed components, especially in body-in-white and trim applications. In certain circumstances, a robot will pick up a part, present it to a stationary processing head, and manipulate it as necessary to finish the cut. Alternatively, the laser might be installed on a robot arm to guide the beam around the part's 3-dimensional contours.

Combining these two techniques allows for a wide range of processes. It manages the workpiece and the laser head to carry out numerous cutting operations as effectively as possible. Multiple laser processes can often be carried out within a single robot cell, speeding up production and reducing cycle times.

Lasers aren't just used in mass production, however. They are also being used in high-end, custom car manufacture, where throughput is low and some tasks are still done by hand. Here, the goal is to increase processing quality, repeatability, and dependability rather than to scale up or speed up production. This will lower rejection rates and reduce the waste of expensive materials. This capability makes laser cutters ideal for both small-scale and large-batch productions.

5. Laser Cutting Machines Can Engrave Materials in a Single Operation

The laser cutting process uses a tightly focused high-energy light/radiation laser beam to create rapid, high-temperature-gradient heating of a single, small-diameter spot. This triggers rapid melting/vaporization of the target material, allowing the spot to travel down through the material thickness rapidly and precisely. 

The hot spot is blasted with gas, blowing away the melted/vaporized material. This process exposes the cut bottom to allow renewed melting and localized cooling, enabling the cut to proceed. For lighter and more reactive metals, the gas assist uses nitrogen to minimize oxidation. Alternatively, for steel, oxygen assistance accelerates the cut process by locally oxidizing material to assist in slag clearance and reduce the reattachment of melted/cut material.

Laser cutting machines are built in a variety of formats. The most common type keeps the workpiece stationary while laser optics (mirrors) move in both the X and Y axes. Alternatively, a “fixed optic” format keeps the laser head stationary and the workpiece moves. A third option is a hybrid of the two previous methods. All methods execute 2D and 2.5D G-code patterns using a computer-controlled programming system to deliver fully automated, complex cutting paths. Figure 1 is an example of a laser cutting process:

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Laser cutting advantages include: high precision, no material contamination, high speed, unlimited 2D complexity, a wide variety of materials, and a wide variety of applications and industries.

High Precision

The narrowness of the energy beam and the precision with which the material and/or the laser optics can be moved ensures extremely high cutting quality. Laser cutting allows the execution of intricate designs that can be cut at high feed rates, even in difficult or fragile material substrates.

No Material Contamination

Traditional rotary cutter processing of materials requires coolants to be applied. The coolant can contaminate the cut parts, which must then be de-greased. Grinding processes may also require coolant/lubricant to be applied. The ablation of the grinding wheel, a natural part of the process, leaves carbide granules that are a hazard in many products. Similarly, water cutting leaves garnet residues. Laser cutting involves only energy and gases and poses no risk of material contamination of the resulting parts.

High Speed

Few production methods can come close in processing speed to laser cutting. The ability to cut a 40 mm steel sheet using a 12 kW oxygen-assisted laser provides speeds some 10x faster than a bandsaw and 50–100 times faster than wire cutting.

Unlimited 2D Complexity

Laser cutting allows intricacy through the nature of the G-code movement control method of positioning and the small size of the applied energy hot spot. Features that are only weakly attached to the main body are cut without any application of force, so the process is essentially limited by material properties, rather than process capabilities.

Variety of Materials

Laser cutting is a flexible technology that can be adapted to cut widely different materials efficiently, including: acrylic and other polymers, stainless steel, mild steel, titanium, hastelloy, and tungsten. This versatility is increasing as technology develops. For example, dual frequency lasers can be applied to cut carbon fiber reinforced composites—one frequency for the fiber, one for the bonding agent.

Variety of Applications and Industries

Laser cutting finds application in many manufacturing industries because of the combination of versatility, high processing speeds, and precision. Sheet materials are key to production across most manufacturing industries. Applications of laser cutting across industries include: airframes, ships, medical implants, electronics, prototyping, and mass production.

Laser Cutting Disadvantages

Laser cutting disadvantages include: limitations on material thickness, harmful gases and fumes, high energy consumption, and upfront costs.

Limitation on Material Thickness

Most laser cutting machines sit in the <6 kW range. Their cut depth is limited to ~12 mm in metal thickness—and they accomplish that only slowly (~10 mm/s). It requires the largest and most powerful machines to reach the practical limits of cutting. However, similar limits apply to waterjet and wire erosion cutting. All three processes perform these deeper cuts faster than can otherwise be achieved.

Harmful Gases and Fumes

While many materials—particularly metals—do not produce harmful gases in the cutting process, many polymers and some metals do. For example, PTFE and various fluoropolymers produce phosgene gas (which is incompatible with human environments) when heated to high temperatures. These materials require controlled atmosphere processing.

High Energy Consumption

Laser cutting machines have a higher energy consumption rate than other cutting tools. A 3-axis CNC machine cutting out 40 mm steel plate blanks will consume around 1/10th of the power of a laser cutting machine extracting the same part. However, if the processing time is 1 minute on the laser cutter and 20 minutes on the CNC, the net power usage is 2:1 in favor of the laser cutter. Each part will have a different profile in this regard, but the differentials are rarely simple to analyze.

The alternatives to laser cutting are wire cutting, plasma cutting, waterjet cutting, and CNC machining.

Plasma Cutting

Plasma cutting is similar to electrical discharge machining (EDM) in that it erodes material by applying an arc to ablate the substrate. However, the arc is conducted from an electrode on a superheated gas plasma stream that directs the arc and blasts out the molten material from the cut. Plasma cutting and laser cutting are similar in that both are capable of cutting metal parts. Additionally, plasma cutting is suited to heavy materials and relatively coarse processing, for example, preparing heavy steel components for architectural and ship projects. It is a much less clean process and generally requires significant post-cut cleanup to make presentable parts, unlike laser cutting.

Waterjet Cutting

Waterjet cutting is typically a small machine process for the precise processing of a wide range of materials. The garnet abrasive employed is considerably harder than the majority of processed materials, but the hardest workpieces do pose a challenge for the process. Waterjet cannot match the processing speeds of laser cutting on thicker, hard substrates. In terms of similarities, both waterjet cutting and laser cutting produce high-quality cut parts, are suitable for working with many materials, and both processes have a small kerf (cut) width.

CNC Machining

CNC machining is considered one of the more traditional methods of extracting parts from flat material stock. It is similar to laser cutting in that both produce high-precision parts, are fast, reliable, and provide excellent repeatability. Compared to laser cutting, CNC requires more setup and more processing time. CNC also delivers lower throughput/capacity and requires greater manual intervention. However, results can be of similar quality, albeit at a generally higher cost. Rotating cutting tools apply considerable forces to the cut material and can result in more extensive local heating. The main advantages of CNC processing are the ability to accommodate complex 3D designs and to perform partial depth (rather than through) cuts.

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