Many new technologies and solutions by Prima Power had their world premiere at Blechexpo in Stuttgart last week. For instance, the top-of-the-range Laser Genius 1530 laser cutter with a Combo Tower Laser automation system was showcased for the first time with a 10 kW fibre laser source by IPG Photonics, which further boosts its performance, especially on thicker materials.

This product configuration is particularly suited to market sectors where heavier gauges are commonly used, such as agriculture and construction. Thanks to its laser head with adaptive optics for the automatic management of the focal position, Laser Genius is said to provide high quality and maximum speed without compromise on the whole thickness range for a wide variety of materials, including mild steel, stainless steel, aluminium, copper and brass.
Novel machine architecture based on a synthetic granite frame and carbon-fibre cantilever structure, along with linear drives, are some of its other key technical features. Laser Genius is managed by the user-friendly Prima Power Open CNC, while the HMI framework is the new Prima Power Tulus Laser 2D, a logical, modern interface that applies the existing Tulus platform and its ecosystem to 2D laser cutting machines.
At Blechexpo, the machine was equipped with a Combo Tower Laser flexible storage system featuring integrated loading and unloading features. The Combo Tower Laser has been developed and manufactured by Prima Power specifically for 2D laser machines.
For further information www.primapower.com

Citizen Machinery’s fully integrated laser processing into the turn-milling cycle of its Cincom CNC sliding head lathes enables near endless possibilities for the creation of geometric shapes or precision holes into solid bar material which has been pre-drilled within the same production cycle or directly into tubular bar material.

The development opens the metal cutting process to producing burr-free holes as small as 0.2 mm diameter, produce features such as spiral cuts with 0.025 mm kerf width and maintain consistent and accurate radii less than 0.1 mm in corners of slots without any risk of tool wear or breakage. These can also be produced at a far faster rate than can be achieved by a separate EDM process, for instance.
Citizen’s breakthrough opens new design concepts in sectors such as medical, electronic and micro-machining. In a recent trial, a 150 W continuous laser head with an air purge to seal and clear the lens was mounted in the gang tool slide of the latest Citizen Cincom L20-Vlll machine in order to be incorporated into the cutting cycle to produce a complete workpiece from tubular material in a single cycle.
The workpiece, produced from 18 mm diameter tube with a 16 mm bore was turned, faced and had a single flat milled on the outside diameter. The laser beam then proceeded along and around the periphery using C-axis rotation to create a series of rectangular shaped features that were interlocked allowing the component to extend and retract.
A series of cuts were made to form a mesh and the Citizen logo profiled around the circumference.
For further information www.citizenmachinery.co.uk

With a record number of visitors to the stand, the 19th edition of the recent Schweissen & Schneiden exhibition (Netherlands, October) was a huge success for Hypertherm. The introduction to X-Definition – the new class of plasma, the live cutting demonstrations and the interactive stand were highly appreciated by visitors.

Those attending the show could attend impressive cutting displays. For instance, metal artist Marcel Boonen demonstrated the capabilities of the latest generation of Powermax plasma cutters, the Powermax45 XP, by creating steel paintings and other metal art live on the stand.
Through a live, online connection with Hypertherm’s Cutting Technology Centre at its EMEA headquarters in the Netherlands, the cut quality and speeds of the new XPR300 and XDefinition plasma were ably demonstrated.
Interactive tables that allowed visitors to browse product information, along with the virtual reality game ‘Be amaze-d’, completed the visitor interactive experiences on the stand.
“The technologies we used on our stand clearly portrayed our ‘Shaping Possibility’ company vision”, says Theo Cornielje, regional director for the EMEA region. “They allowed us to explain our technologies in depth, show the systems’ capabilities and guide visitors to the solution that best fits their cutting needs.”
Hypertherm designs and manufactures advanced cutting products for use in a variety of industries such as shipbuilding, manufacturing and automotive repair. Its product lines include plasma, laser and waterjet cutting systems, in addition to CNC motion and height controls, CAM nesting software, robotic software, and consumables.
For further information www.hypertherm.com