Laser Metal Cutting for the Aerospace Industry
Your aerospace project hinges on your ability to produce components that live up to design specifications. The challenge is that many of these components are small, extremely precise, and expected to withstand heavy stress loads.
To match those needs, you often have to utilize hard and light metals, like carbon steel, and these materials are not easily manufactured.
This is why the industry relies on precision laser cutting for these metals. In general, laser cutting is handled by CO2 or fiber lasers. For a modern project, a fiber laser will provide the best results for hard metal cutting, and that is apparent in a handful of common aerospace applications.
Shims
As a single aircraft can employ thousands of custom shims, each serving a unique purpose, access to rapid and precise cutting is the only way to keep a development project on schedule.
As an example, air bearings typically use shims to set or adjust the load on the system. Since the size and shape of the cut impact the load set by the shim, laser cutting provides an economical way to source an array of shims that can diversify testing and application parameters for an individual bearing.
Shims see countless other applications, from resolving tolerance mismatches in load-bearing aerostructures to sealing vibration mounts to performing basic but essential washer functions.
When shims need to be incredibly light and strong, carbon steels are common material choices, and fiber lasers provide the best cutting results for high-precision designs. The narrow beam, laser wavelength, and flexible delivery provide the highest quality in cut finishes along with the lowest variability in product dimensions.
Precision Prototyping
The variety of shims in a single aircraft is a single manifestation of how precision and diversity combine in aerospace design structures. The simple fact is that any design project will require prototyping for any number of precisely machined parts, and laser metal cutting dramatically lowers turnaround times on prototyping.
Imagine a single gear for a rudder pedal. If a project requires any adjustments in size, shape, material, stress load, or other metrics, then an entirely new piece must be designed. Laser cutting allows you to software design a number of new parts and have them cut perfectly, sometimes with same-day turnaround.
This can hold true for any metal part that requires prototyping. Software-controlled lasers are easily programmed and adjusted, and the results are as reliable as possible. Laser cutting sits at the nexus of iterative designs, and fiber lasers are often the best cutting tool available for hard metals.
Endless Possibilities
Simply put, any aerospace design project is going to deploy thousands upon thousands of uniquely designed and manufactured components, and you need a reliable resource for all of it. Micron Laser specializes in exactly this kind of custom work, and our team can partner with yours to manufacture as many parts in as many design arrangements as needed.
Whatever your laser metal cutting needs, MLT has the solution.
Micron Laser Technology is well-known for its PCB laser services and as experts in laser part manufacturing in both the medical and aerospace industries. We thrive on providing a service or product that advances product design or manufacture. We understand that our customers’ success is directly tied to our own. Our services and product offerings are infused with the founder’s commitment to “service, price, turn-time, and consistency”.