wood engraving
/ By Miguel Menargues / Other/ No comments

What material should be used for woodcutting?

Woodcutting: The inventory of usable material

Wood engraving is an activity that has many uses. In addition to the artistic interest, it allows to carry out markings on various wooden supports. Achieving the desired result in this respect requires adequate, reliable but also practical equipment.

Numerous hand tools can be used to make markings on wood. This is notably the case of the chisel. It is also possible to achieve the desired result by working the wood with heat.

In addition to manual tools, wood engraving can also be carried out using automated equipment. Faster and much more reliable, this type of equipment can achieve high performance in wood engraving. This is particularly true of basic laser engraving machines, available for purchase on Amazon.

Woodcutting equipment: hand tools

The engraving chisel

The basic tool for woodcutting is the chisel. Manual, it is characterized by a rather difficult grip and requires a good training to present interesting results.

On the register of precision, the chisel does not offer great performance, unless you have experience and mastery bordering on mastery. This rudimentary tool allows relatively coarse engraving with a low level of detail and nuance.

The soldering iron

The soldering iron is a material that allows pyrography: the engraving is made on wood by means of heat. This tool is characterized by a level of fineness much higher than that of the chisel.

The engraving pen

The engraving pen is a manual tool powered by electricity. It can be equipped with different sized cutters to produce various impressions on the wood. The material offers a particular level of comfort because it allows you to work on wood with a lot of flexibility.

The variety of available strawberries makes it possible to create a detailed work with many nuances.

Wood engraving: The use of laser

In addition to metal cutting, laser technology allows the processing of many other materials. Laser cutting of wood is one of the known applications of the laser. But this technology is not limited to this use.

The laser engraver

This digital and fully automated device allows the engraving of wood using the laser. Light and relatively small in size, it offers the possibility of making an impeccable print on the wood, based on the models transmitted to it.

The laser engraver thus makes it possible to carry out personalized and high-quality engravings on the wooden support.

Trotec Laser is for example a company specialized in this type of equipment. It offers a wide range of equipment and tools for both professional and personal use.

The mode of operation

As a digital device, the laser engraver receives engraving instructions from another device. This can be a smartphone, tablet or computer. Various connection modes allow the transmission of the content or pattern to be engraved on the wood.

The operation of the automated wood engraving equipment is ensured by a USB connection, which allows great flexibility in its power supply.

wood engraving material

The different types available

The available laser engravers are of various types:

  • The laser of a CO2 engraver is formed by a mixture of CO2 agitated by a source of electricity. Its beam is of good quality and it is used in most models;
  • The fiber laser has a much higher power output and is also more resistant and durable in use;
  • The crystal laser is known for its solidity. Although it is not as durable as the fibre laser, it can be used to mark a wide variety of materials.

Need high-performance welding instead of laser engraving? New technology from laser welder of German market leader IPG.

The interest of the laser for engraving on wood

The main advantage of using a laser engraver to engrave wood is its speed. The device can reproduce a pattern or design with astonishing speed, whereas hand work is slow and laborious.

Another positive aspect of the laser engraver is the fidelity of the rendering. The result of the work is always extremely precise and of excellent quality, provided that the device is used properly. You can click Here to read an article about laser cutting.

The wide range of possibilities is also an advantage that justifies the use of lasers. The nuances, details and fineness of the reproduction make it a woodcutting material that allows a high level of creativity to be achieved.

precision leveler for metal
/ By Miguel Menargues / Other • laser cutting/ No comments

Problems with flatness? Think precision leveler!

What is the purpose of a precision leveler ? First of all, it is important to know that your parts can be deformed as a result of laser, plasma or punching operations. If this is the case, it is because the temperature contrast generated by this type of technology releases the stresses inherent in the metal. This causes the phenomenon of cambering, also known as tiling. Even worse, your sheets may be tiled or bent before the laser cutting process.

Although quite common, this phenomenon can be detrimental to your day-to-day production. Indeed, whether it is on sheet metal or on already cut parts, it can cause a loss of productivity in the order of 15 to 25%, or even more if you use welding robots.

In addition, touch-ups may be necessary in order to regain optimal flatness. These operations can generate a lot of scrap when it is impossible to recover the defect, causing a loss of profitability. This problem is all the more present as the length of the parts, or sheets, is important.

Rather than manually straightening your parts to meet your customers' requirements, you can optimize their stability with a simple leveling operation lasting about 2 minutes. The purpose of this operation is to subject the sheet or part to several alternating bending operations applied by small cross-section flattening rollers. The effect of these operations will be to eliminate residual stresses and obtain a perfectly flat part ready for machining in record time, without the need for time-consuming and damaging rework that would be detrimental to your profitability.

The efficiency of a precision leveler with servo-hydraulic motors

The gain in profitability can easily be calculated. For example, if you manually straighten 10,000 parts per year, an operation that can take up to 30 minutes per part, this means that your operators spend 5,000 hours a year straightening.

On the other hand, ifyou reduce the operation time to 2 minutes per piece, your operators will only spend 333 hours a year for a better end result. An exponential gain that doesn't even take into account the improvement in the stability of your parts, which will allow you to save time on each of the steps after cutting.

In general, 2 operators are required to perform manual straightening of parts. To sum up, they will cost you around 30 euros each per hour, i.e. a total of 60€/h x 5,000h = 300,000€ / year. 

On the other hand, if you equip yourself with a precision leveler with servo-hydraulic motors, the operation will only cost you 60€/h x 333 h = 19 980€ per year. This means a potential gain of more than 280 000€ each year.

This is a theoretical example to illustrate our point. Everyone must indeed be aware of the importance of these deformation problems, and not hide the fact that the hidden costs are potentially significant.

system for precision levelers
Zoom on the Precision Leveler System

Metal planers: A new partner of choice!

Of course, the SERVILASE team remains mobilized to help you to better understand this problem specific to thermal cutting and to precisely measure the impact in terms of costs.

In addition, we have recently moved closer to the company Roccia SRL and became the distributors for France. Based in Italy, this brand designs and manufactures a range of state-of-the-art levelers. We will be pleased to complete the information given in this article in order to offer you the machine that corresponds to your needs. And always with a quality/price ratio that is unbeatable on the market.

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