twb8899 wrote:
>
>
>>What power CO2 laser do you need for cutting 3mm
>>steel/brass/aluminium?
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> I had a Mitsubishi CNC Laser for several years and have some
> knowledge of how they work. This machine was a model 1212HC with a
> 3000 watt resonator and 48" x48" cutting table. The entire machine
> installation was the size of two pickup trucks...
A laser cutting place near me has an x-y machine about 3m wide, 10m long, and 4-5m high.
The laser is in a hut about 2m long, and the laser looked about 4ft (hard to see inside).
The light is guided to the head thru many metres of fibre-optic cable. They can cut 10cm
of steel (a bit of beam divergence tho). The cable glowed greenish when active. IIRC, YAGs
are greenish?