Laser cutting can be highly automated. The laser control software is very easy to learn and high school graduates or 50+-year-old ladies can be the operator.

The training usually lasts 1-2 days and then the operator can just use it to its full advantage. Generally speaking, the operator just needs to handle the super-simple pattern-pick-up job and load cut items and materials. And sometimes adjust the power a little bit depending on different materials.

Since laser cutting machines require very little in the way of special skills from the operator, so you only need to pay the lower wages of a general worker, rather than the traditional wages of a skilled worker with cutting skills. In addition, such workers can be inducted after simple training, so your recruitment pressure and managing stress can be greatly reduced.

Generally speaking, a laser cutter’s straight-line speed is no more than 1000mm/s. But several factors will affect the actual laser cutter cutting speed.

Firstly is the laser power. Generally, the bigger power you choose, the faster speed you can get if cutting the same material. But when the power gets bigger, the laser spot size would also get bigger which may affect the material edge. So you may need to balance between cutting speed as well as cutting edge. Take the white plain fabric, for example, we will suggest you choose a 100W-130W laser tube.

Secondly is the material density and material thickness. The bigger the density is, the slower laser will cut. The thicker the material is, also the slower laser will cut. Generally, we suggest the single layer material thickness is no more than 1cm.

Thirdly is graphic design. The more complicated the design is, the slower laser will cut. When it comes to complex shapes, the laser needs to keep turning and needs to keep accelerating and decelerating, so the actual cutting speed cannot reach the theoretical straight cutting speed. Conversely, the simpler the pattern, the more likely it is that the laser will approach the theoretical maximum linear cutting speed and the actual cutting speed will be higher.

The fourth one is the control card brand. We are using the Trocen control card and RD control card for most of our laser cutters. There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these two motion control cards. The Trocen card will cut faster in general. The RD card will have a little more cutting accuracy. So when we are cutting flexible materials, we prefer to use the Trocen card for getting a higher production. When we are cutting acrylic, wood, and other plate materials, we use RD cards to get a better cutting and engraving quality. The KD1814-SY laser cutter is using the Trocen control card because of its main applications.

The fifth influencing factor is the focusing lens and the reflective mirrors. High-quality focusing lenses have a high light transmission and reflective mirrors have high reflectivity. The laser light coming out of the same laser tube has a low loss rate during propagation and can operate at a faster speed when it reaches the cutting end. Conversely, if cheap focusing lenses and reflective lenses are used, not only will the overall cutting speed of the machine be affected, but the lenses will also be particularly susceptible to damage. Laser lenses and mirrors are glass products and are not covered by a warranty, so it is important to use high-quality ones.

KASU Laser uses American 26 and Singapore Wavelength brand lenses and mirrors, which can give full play to the power of the laser tube, helping you to increase the capacity of your machine and reduce the cost of consumables.

What remains to be influenced is the quality of the overall laser machine, including the quality of hundreds of the individual spare parts, the quality of the modules and guide rails, the weight of the overall sheet metal frame, the stability of the structure design and so on, all of which affect the cutting speed of the laser.

This is because the laser head generates vibrations in the machine during the cutting process. The faster the cutting speed, the higher this vibration will be and the higher the requirements for the stability of the machine.

A poor-quality laser cutter cannot support the high cutting speed of the machine, because the cutting pattern will be distorted and the cutter is very susceptible to various failures. You can only compromise by reducing the cutting speed.

So if you want to achieve high speed and stable cutting for a long time, you must use a good quality laser cutter.

Due to all the factors mentioned above, the actual cutting speed and production differ and you will need to test them one by one.

Because of the laser focal length problem, we take the most used 50.8MM focus lens and 100W glass Co2 laser tube, for example. We recommend that customers mainly cut the thickness of the materials to 10mm.

If you need to cut more than 10mm, configure a higher focal length lens and a bigger power laser tube. For example, if you want to cut 10+mm acrylic, a 200W laser cutter with a 100MM focus lens would be your best choice, which can cut up to 20mm thickness acrylic. For general materials, the thicker the material is, the slower the laser cutting speed.

The most popular glass tube power ranges from 80W-200W, which generally can last for more than 2 years based on 8 working hours per day, but prices range from 250-1,000USD per tube only. If you want to cut normal textile, fabric, plastic, vinyl, paper, or 3-5mm plywood or acrylic, a general 100W laser cutter would be more than enough. If you want to cut thicker leather or composite fibers, a 130W or 150W laser cutter can have a faster speed.

Generally speaking, the thicker the material is, the bigger power you may need to adjust. But remember don’t use over 70% of the total power for a long time, which will shorten the tube duration time.

When it comes to thick materials, if it is not possible to increase the cutting speed by increasing the laser tube wattage, you can choose a multi-head model laser cutter depending on your industry, so that the cutting efficiency can be doubled several times, but the purchase price of the laser cutter may only increase by 10-30%.

For example, the production of two sets of KASU Co2 laser cutters with four heads can equal one set of the industrial die-cutting machine.

There are two major types of Co2 laser tubes: glass tubes and metal tubes. And which type to choose mainly depends on the function you want the laser to realize and your product requirements.

Metal tubes have a lot of features such as thinner spot size and stabler laser power. And when you want to do denim washing or some intricate design surface marking job, metal tubes are recommended. But when cutting most non-metal materials, the China-made glass tube is much more recommended.

And the prices and maintenance of the two types of tubes vary a lot and you also need to take this into consideration. The low-cost China-made glass laser tubes only cost hundreds of dollars. But a metal tube can be at least 20+ times more expensive than the same power glass tubes.

Though the duration of one metal tube can last from 2-5 years and it would cost you thousands of dollars to fill in the gas. And you will need professionals to install the metal tube after the gas-filling for you and you can easily replace the glass tube just by following our installation videos.

The lifespan of one laser tube generally can last for 1-2 years based on 8 working hours per day.

The warranty time for one laser tube is generally 10-12 months. When it runs out of gas, you only need to pay hundreds of dollars to replace one tube.

No, the Co2 glass laser tube is super cheap compared with its lifetime of it. 80W, 100W, 130W, 150W, and 200W are the most popular glass tube power ranges.

The bigger power, the more expensive. But the general prices range from 250-1,000USD per tube only.

The answer is there is no need to change the laser tube, but you may need to adjust the laser power in the laser cutter software or the snob in the laser machine.

Generally speaking, the thicker the material is, the bigger power you may need to adjust to achieve the same cutting speed. But remember don’t use over 70% of the total power for a long time, which will shorten the tube duration time.

There are three main types of working platforms, fixed honeycomb working table, fixed knife blade working table, and conveyor working table.

For piece-to-piece plates and materials, a knife blade fixed working table is recommended to have a perfect cutting edge effect due to the minimum touching areas of the materials and the knife blades.

For soft roll-to-roll materials, both honeycomb fixed working table and conveyor belt model work. And if you have more budget, a conveyor table is more recommended and it can automate the whole cutting process and save you much more money in the long run.

You should choose the working platform with a width a little bit bigger than your raw material width.

Take the sheet plywood for example, if the width is 122cm, then you should choose a model with 130cm.

But for soft textile materials, you better choose a width of about 20cm bigger, because you need to take the material roll edge unevenness into consideration.

And for the length part, varies, and you need to think about your workshop space and your product pattern sizes.

Generally the bigger, the better, but also more expensive. And for the conveyor model, a bigger length is also not that necessary because of the continuous working mode which can easily cut oversized patterns.

KASU Co2 laser cutter mainly combines KD Series with Canon camera, KX Series with an industrial CCD camera, and K Series.

Both KD Series and KX Series laser cutters can work under two modes: Vision Mode and Non-Vision Mode.

While using this non-vision working mode, both KD Series and KX Series become K Series. And Yes, you need to prepare cutting files for the K Series.

You will need to prepare the CAD design and layout files from other software and import the files into the laser control software to generate the cutting file.

Or you can draw the cutting path in our laser control software directly and after setting cutting parameters, the laser cutter will start the cutting process automatically.

When using the vision working mode, KD Series’ contour auto-detection mode can generate the cutting path automatically. So if under this working mode, the answer is NO, you do not need to prepare cutting files.

When using the graphic feature template matching mode of KD Series and K Series, if the design is complicated and the printed or embroidered graphics have SMALL distortion, it is recommended to import the design file into our vision software to generate the template. So if under this working mode, the answer is YES, you need to prepare the cutting files.

But even when using the graphic feature template matching mode of KD Series and K Series, if the printed or embroidered graphics have BIG distortion, you better draw the cutting path in our laser software and generate the template directly. If so, the answer is NO, a prepared cutting file is also no use under this condition.

And the whole machine’s electricity consumption is about 2-3KW per hour. And the main energy consumption comes from the water chiller, exhausting fan, and air pump.

Compared with other digital cutting machines, laser cutters are the most energy-efficient cutting machine and can help save you a lot of money in the long run.

We give all our laser machines a 1-year warranty except for some consumables. The glass laser tube warranty time is 10-12 months since the laser machine reaches your factory (100w, 130w, 150w all 10 months, 200w 12 months).  But there is no warranty for focusing lenses and reflective mirrors.

Basically speaking, Co2 laser’s consumables are little. Generally, the glass Co2 laser tube, the focusing lens, and the reflective mirror would be considered as consumables.

But one brand glass Co2 laser tube can last for at least 10,000 hours and only cost hundreds of US dollars to replace a new one.

The focusing lens would easily get broken if it’s getting dirty. And it is suggested your operators clean it every day.  And if you are careful enough, the focusing lens won’t get broken. But if you have to replace it, it only costs you a few dozen US dollars.

The reflective mirror only needs to be replaced when the surface got blurred and the optical reflectivity will be reduced. For one head, there would be three reflective mirrors and you need to replace them all.  One reflective mirror is no more than 10 US dollars.

We only accept TT payment terms. A 50% deposit is required to confirm your order and balance before shipment. But in some countries, LC payment term is also an option.

We already developed several different machine series and models according to different industrial applications. And we suggest you choose among our current offers. And we will need less than 7 days to manufacture the cutter of normal models after you pay.

But if you have special needs, we can also customize your required sizes, machine color, OEM your brand, or even design a new structure for your own concerns, our professional team can make the delivery within 20 days including designing time.

A laser cutting machine usually has several hundred spare parts. After you pay the deposit and we confirm the orders, all the details regarding the orders will be generated into a BOM Sheet with its unique ID in our ERP system.

All the laser accessories are all named and coded and placed in specific locations in our warehouse. The hundreds of spare parts will be categorized into Pre-Assemble, Assemble, Debug & Age, and Dispatch processes. Different departments can coordinate well and the whole production process is also under control.

Our factory has a complete incoming material inspection, process inspection and debugging, and an aging inspection system.

After 24 hours of aging, each machine has to engrave pentagrams and circles at the specified cutting speed, and only machines that achieve the preset cutting effect can pass the inspection and get ready for delivery. And this test cutting card will be put in the toolbox in each and every one of our machines.

Before each machine delivery, our QC will record all the details regarding this machine, including all the spare parts in the toolbox, on top of the platform, and the whole machine outlook. All recordings will be archived for future review.

We have very detailed hands-on videos and written tutorials, and we have professional overseas after-service engineers in our factory who can communicate in English or other languages with the assistance of translation software, providing you with prompt online chat, video, and messaging support.

And we also have local dealers in some countries who can also provide onsite training and after-sale service for you.

Of course, the advantages of a laser cutting machine go beyond replacing labor.

In many applications, its excellent cutting accuracy can significantly improve the quality of traditional products, which can increase the added value of your products and allow you to receive more high-quality, high-priced orders compared to your counterparts who do not use the laser cutting machine.

Many factors need to be taken into account when calculating how long you can get your investment back after buying the Co2 laser cutter.

If you choose to buy the Co2 laser cutter from KASU laser, the answer is YES. And you can make extra money with the KASU Co2 laser cutter in a very short time.