Lasers provide process improvement
Why have lasers become a prominent method to cut, etch, and mark? The answer is process improvement.
Industrial lasers are thought of as Precise, Powerful and Elegant. But they are not bringing as much new capability as one might think. Many industrial lasers are cutting and marking tools at heart, and neither cutting nor marking started with lasers. They are an innovative way to do an old job.
Older cutting and marking methods use direct contact. Lasers are unique in that they perform their function without surface contact. This gives lasers two key advantages:
- Reliability—lasers neither wear nor clog when cutting and marking. Direct contact methods experience both issues, making them more unstable and prone to breakdowns.
- Precision—light energy can be focused very finely and manipulated with exactness. This level of precision is difficult to achieve with direct contact methods. Lasers also maintain high precision throughout their lifespans as a con-sequence of their non-contact approach.
