Custom CNC speed-up laser cutting from Taiwan

Customised CNC technology from NUM is helping the laser cutting machine manufacturer Favor Laser to accelerate product development and address new markets. Using special hardware and software designed by NUM, the Taiwanese company has developed a high precision laser cutter that is capable of producing very small or very large parts from sheet metal, with a feed rate of up to 60 metres per minute. This new machine will mark Favor Laser’s entry into the high performance end of the market, which the company intends to penetrate rapidly through a groundbreaking combination of performance and highly aggressive pricing that will reduce the costs of these machines by some 20 percent.

Founded in 1994, Favor Laser is based in New Taipei City, Taiwan, with additional sales and manufacturing facilities in Shanghai, China. Until now, the company has concentrated on producing laser cutters for the low cost end of the market, offering four ranges of machine to suit different sheet metal fabrication requirements such as small batch size manufacturing, precision cutting of small parts, or high volume production of larger parts.

In 2010, Favor Laser took the strategic decision to extend its product range by developing a high performance multi-capability laser cutting machine for the international market, which is currently dominated by a small number of Swiss, German and Japanese manufacturers. The company’s initial research indicated that by combining its laser cutting technology with value-engineered hardware and advanced CNC software, it would be able to produce a machine with the same performance as the market leaders, but at significantly lower cost.

All Favor Laser machines are based on an innovative flying optics system, where the metal sheet that is being cut is supported on a stationary table, and the cutting head which directs the laser beam is moved horizontally above the surface of the sheet. This approach has several significant advantages over machines that move the workpiece beneath a static laser beam. The cutting head has a low and constant mass which facilitates fast and precise positioning, whereas moving the workpiece – which changes mass throughout the cutting process – is slower and more difficult to achieve, demanding complex and expensive motion control systems to maintain cutting accuracy. As well as improving machine throughput and productivity, when cutting thin material the faster cutting speed of flying optic laser cutters helps prevent heat build-up deforming the workpiece.

Favor Laser’s new XO high performance laser cutter is a four axis machine, but uses two motors for the X axis. Horizontal positioning of the cutting head is handled by the X and Y axes, while the Z axis controls the height of the head above the surface of the workpiece and the fourth (U) axis is used for loading and unloading material. Patented adaptive optics compensate for the length of laser beam, which varies depending on the position of the cutting head relative to the laser oscillator. A high speed servo is used for the Z axis – the gap between the cutting head and workpiece is continually monitored and adjusted to maintain beam focus and maximise cutting efficiency.

After investigating various CNC options, Favor Laser was keen to use NUM’s Flexium 68 CNC system for its new XO machine. The CNC was chosen for both hardware and software reasons: Flexium 68's motion control hardware very closely matched the control required for this type of machine – plus it included built-in configuration flexibility for future enhancements – and it offered unique software functionality that would simplify application programming. In particular, the ‘Dynamic Operator’ (DO) function, which is unique to NUM, was judged ideal for the program that dynamically controls the gap between the cutting head and the workpiece. By using fast calculation and communication facilities, the DO function enables event-driven machine cyclNike Air Max 90