Laser Cutting 10mm Stainless

In article , Peter Neill writes

No idea about laser cutters, but have you/your customer considered water jet cutting. We have had some done through several inches of metal (very high grade titanium), though ISTR that the kerf does tend to widen a little at those depths.

I've used these guys a couple of times:

They do water jet cutting rather than laser, I've found the quality of cut to be better and there's no burnt edges. Just sent them a rough drawing with dimensions to get a quote, then followed up with a 2D DXF for the actual job. One of the jobs was 18mm mild steel so 10mm S/S should be fine

Cheers, Rob

Thanks for the advice chaps, I'm going to give the laseredge a ring next time this crops up. On this occasion the bits are needed in a bit of hurry, so I'm getting them wire eroded locally at a very reasonable cost.

David & Rob, I did think about water jet and spoke to 2 companies about this. Apparently cutting 10mm stainless will leave a 'skirt' on the part that flares out a few mm from the bottom, so parts would be about 0.25mm/side oversize and need machining back.

As the profile was going to be time consuming to mill without cnc anyway, I thought I'd give water-jet cutting a miss this time!

Interestingly though, I didn't realise until now that waterjet can cut up to 150mm in steel and 250mm in aluminium.

Peter