I have been looking for years for a cutting laser that's powerful enough to get through around 2mm of titanium, yet can still be used in raster mode for engraving of 3D texture and for marking and deep engraving on metal. In the past, it seemed to always be a high powered CO2 laser, the size of a room, fed only by G-code for cutting, or a small CO2 or YAG for marking with no capability to cut metal. There seems to be no laser that I've found that can bridge that gap. I have a YAG welding laser, which has power to blast right through a nickel, but it maxes out at 20 pulses per second (or about 4 PPS at that power) so won't work well for cutting or especially engraving. I also have a Universal sealed CO2 that does a great job on wood, but not enough umph to get through metal. It would seem I need around 400 watts in the conventional CO2 route to do what I need.
I have recently seen a fiber laser at a jewelry show. They have a crazy small spot size, (.0003") so we were able to deeply engrave a titanium ring (about .030" deep) with a 20 watt laser. They run at something like 200kHz and are meant for marking metal or cutting fine stuff like stents. I am having that laser company do their homework to see if they could produce the laser I want. It would take a galvo head and being able to tie it to a rotary axis for cutting. For some reason, nobody else has seemed to do it. It seems like such a thing would be in a lot of demand. Fiber lasers are unbelieveably efficient (like 35%) and plug into the wall and are air cooled. It's a whole different ballgame when those become more popular.
I used to work on a 1500 watt CO2 laser, so I've seen what it takes to cut bike tubes. With a fiber laser, it might only be something like 80 watts or thereabouts. It doesn't seem to be such a tough thing to do, but I guess there are technical reasons having to do with frequencies that work best for certain applications.
Has anyone had experience with a laser that can bridge the gap?