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Common methods for cutting metal materials and steel:
Metal processing is cutting, which involves simply cutting or separating raw materials into shapes to obtain a blank. The common methods for cutting metal and steel include: grinding wheel cutting, saw cutting, flame cutting, plasma cutting, laser cutting, and waterjet cutting.
Grinding wheel cutting
Cutting steel using high-speed rotating grinding wheels. It is a common cutting method. The grinding wheel cutting machine is lightweight, flexible, simple and convenient to use, and is widely used in various occasions, especially in construction sites and indoor decoration. Mainly used for cutting and processing small diameter square tubes, round tubes, special-shaped tubes, etc.
Saw cutting
The method of dividing a workpiece or material by cutting a slot with a saw blade is called sawing. Sawing is carried out using a metal band sawing machine. Cutting materials is a basic requirement in metal processing, so sawing machines are standard equipment in the machining industry. The use of a sawing machine requires selecting the appropriate saw blade based on the hardness of the material and adjusting the cutting speed.
Flame cutting (gas cutting)
The process of flame cutting involves heating the metal through a chemical reaction between oxygen and hot steel, causing it to soften and then melt. Heating gases often use acetylene or natural gas.
Flame cutting can only cut carbon plates and is not suitable for other types of metals such as stainless steel or copper aluminum materials.
The advantage of flame cutting is low cost, and the cutting thickness can reach two meters. The disadvantage is that the heat affected zone and thermal deformation are relatively large, the cross-section is rough, and there are many slag deposits. Considering the subsequent processing, more allowance should be made.
plasma cutting
Plasma cutting method was invented in the 1950s, which uses the heat of high-temperature plasma arc to locally melt (and evaporate) the metal at the cutting edge of the workpiece, and uses the momentum of high-speed plasma to remove the molten metal to form a cutting edge.
Plasma is generally used to cut materials with a thickness of less than 100mm. Unlike flame cutting, plasma cutting has a faster speed, especially when cutting ordinary carbon steel sheets, with a speed that can reach 5-6 times that of oxygen cutting. The cutting surface is smooth, with less thermal deformation and fewer heat affected zones. Plasma cutting is not limited to cutting carbon plates, stainless steel, copper aluminum materials, nickel titanium metals, etc., and can be competent.
laser cutting
Laser cutting is the use of high-energy laser beams to heat, locally melt, and vaporize metals, completing the cutting of materials. It is typically used for efficient and precise cutting of thin steel plates (<30mm).
The cutting quality of laser is excellent, with fast cutting speed and high dimensional accuracy (up to ± 0.05mm). Moreover, due to the laser beam acting on a very small area, the heat affected zone is very small, and the workpiece hardly deforms.
In terms of cutting quality, laser is superior to plasma; In terms of cutting speed, plasma is faster than laser.
Water jet cutting
Water jet cutting is a processing method that uses high-pressure water flow to cut metal. With the continuous improvement of technology, abrasive materials such as pomegranate sand and diamond sand are also mixed into high-pressure water to assist cutting, in order to improve cutting speed and cutting thickness (up to 200mm). The precision of waterjet cutting can reach ± 0.4mm or higher.
Water jet can perform one-time cutting and processing of any material with any curve. Because the medium is water, the advantage of a waterjet is that the heat generated during cutting is immediately carried away by the high-speed flowing water jet, without any thermal effect, making it suitable for cutting projectiles.