Cut to the Chase: Should You Choose Laser or Waterjet Cutting for Your Brass Cutting Needs
Brass is a wonderfully useful material, with its rich yellow sheen and fantastic resistance to corrosion, it is ideally suited to an enormous variety of technological and ornamental products. However, while brass is relatively malleable as far as metals go, it is still very difficult to cut and shape for inexperienced metalworkers; so if you need brass sheeting, shims or rods cut with professional quality, you should turn to a professional metal cutting service.
However, not every professional metal cutting service uses the same tools, and traditional metal cutting equipment has been largely supplanted by two distinct metal cutting technologies now in widespread use -- waterjet cutting and laser cutting. While these are both excellent and highly versatile methods of cutting metal, they also comes with their own distinct advantages and disadvantages -- brass can also be an awkward metal to cut in some circumstances, so these cutting methods will also handle brass differently. Be sure to decide which method is right for you before contracting any brass cutting service.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of having my brass laser cut?
Standard laser cutting techniques used on most metals involve a relatively simple, highly powered carbon dioxide laser. However, brass has a reflective sheen that tends to reflect too much light for these lasers to make clean cuts, so laser cutters used for brass use more powerful and sophisticated laser cutters.
As you can imagine, not every metal cutting service has access to such specialised laser equipment, so one disadvantage of having brass laser cut is finding a cutting service capable of handling the job. If you do find a suitable service, you may find that they charge noticeably higher rates than other types of cutting services, primarily due to the cost of maintaining such equipment and hiring technicians capable of operating it.
However, these disadvantages are more than compensated for by the extreme precision offered by laser cutting, and laser cutting can make smaller, cleaner and more precise cuts than any other commercially available brass cutting technique. It also executes these precise cuts extremely quickly, giving laser cutting workshops a very high turnover rate ideally suited for larger brass cutting projects.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of having my brass cut with waterjets?
As their name would suggest, waterjet cutters use extremely highly pressurised streams of water (often laced with particles of garnet or other hard materials) to create cuts in metal. They are very well suited or brass cutting operations, and unlike laser cutting, no specialised equipment is required to handle brass.
They key advantage of choosing waterjet cutting is that it does not heat the brass around cuts as much as laser cutting, which allows the remaining metal to keep its strength and prevents heat distortion and deformation. Waterjet cutting also tends to be considerably less expensive than fibre laser cutting and is a good option for smaller projects with tighter budgets. It is also a much more environmentally friendly option, as the process uses a surprisingly small amount of water and energy, especially when considered to high powered cutting lasers.
Unfortunately, waterjet cutting is also a much slower process than laser cutting, so make sure that the savings you make aren't counteracted by the extra time you have to wait for your brass to be ready. Waterjet cutters are also incapable of making cuts as small and precise as laser cutters; however, their cuts are more than adequate for practically any commercial purpose, so this only becomes a problem when dealing with brass components that must be incredibly precisely made (such as aerospace components).
To learn more about brass cutting, contact a company like Intracut.
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