Laser cutting machines emerged as early as the 1970s; following more than three decades of global exploration and development in sheet metal processing equipment manufacturing, they are now widely used in sectors such as automotive manufacturing, construction machinery, aerospace, and mold development. However, to date, the research and development of laser cutting machines has largely been dominated by countries with advanced manufacturing industries.
There remains a significant gap between my country's laser cutting technology and advanced international technology. Most laser cutting machines currently in use domestically are imported from abroad at high costs, and there is also a disparity in theoretical research, which focuses primarily on spatial trajectories and the implementation of the cutting process. The interaction between the laser, the material, and the curved surface-essentially the underlying mechanism of laser cutting-has not been deeply investigated, whereas models for this process were proposed abroad as early as the 1970s. Current processing equipment mostly employs robotic arm configurations or five-axis simultaneous cutting schemes. The technical principles behind these methods mirror conventional five-axis simultaneous CNC machining, treating the focused laser beam as a specialized "laser tool" and the laser focal point's trajectory as the machining path envelope. Handling spatial curve patterns on complex curved surfaces typically requires the creation of intricate multi-axis interpolation CNC programs and the performance of interference checks. Drawbacks of this approach include high equipment costs, compromised overall machining precision due to the excessive number of simultaneous axes, and significant technical challenges regarding operation and maintenance.
The new laser cutting machine comprises a worktable; left and right sliders movably mounted on the worktable to travel along the X-axis; front and rear sliders movably mounted on the worktable to travel along the Y-axis; up-and-down sliders mounted on the left and right sliders to travel along the Z-axis; a cutting head mounted on the up-and-down sliders; and a rotating shaft mounted on the front and rear sliders. The rotating shaft is capable of 360-degree rotation; the up-and-down sliders feature a laser channel through which the laser generator transmits the laser beam to the cutting head; and the rotating shaft is equipped with a clamping assembly to secure the workpiece. Because the left and right sliders move horizontally (laterally) across the worktable, the front and rear sliders move horizontally (longitudinally) across the worktable, the up-and-down sliders move vertically, and the rotating shaft rotates, the laser processing of the workpiece can be accomplished simply by coordinating the movements of these sliders and the rotating shaft. To facilitate the quick and convenient securing of the workpiece to the rotating shaft, the clamping assembly comprises a base plate fixed to the shaft, positioning pins, and a locking mechanism mounted on the base plate. To simplify the structure, the system also incorporates a first drive motor for the left-right sliding blocks, a second drive motor for the front-rear sliding blocks, a third drive motor for the up-down sliding blocks, and a fourth drive motor for rotating the shaft. With this novel laser cutting machine, the control unit maintains a substantially constant distance between the cutting head and the cutting point on the workpiece, as well as a substantially constant movement speed, during straight, angular, and arc cutting operations.
Furthermore, during arc cutting, the laser beam remains perpendicular to the tangent at the cutting point, resulting in exceptionally high cutting precision. Additionally, the cutting process can be initiated simply by configuring parameters via the control unit, making operation highly convenient.
