Fonon Corporation Highlights Its Laser Cutting Technology for Highly Reflective Metals During Automotive Manufacturing

Fonon Corporation, a multi-market holding company, R&D center, equipment designer and manufacturer of advanced laser material processing systems for subtractive and additive manufacturing, highlights applications for its laser cutting technologies for highly reflective aluminum frames in the automotive industry.

Fonon Corporation's Titan FX Laser Cutting System offers the most advanced, high-performance, reliable and cost-effective way to cut aluminum and other reflective metals during car manufacturing. Auto manufacturers strive to achieve the perfect balance of weight and durability when building vehicle frames. A lightweight frame means more fuel efficiency, while a heavier frame means durability, which leads to better safety. In search of that balance, vehicle frames get manufactured using a wide range of materials, including carbon fiber, plastic, steel and aluminum.

Carbon fiber has an exceptional strength-to-weight ratio, but it is among the costlier options, so it's often associated with sports cars and the luxury sector. Plastic, due to its flexibility and lightweight nature, is frequently used in automotive manufacturing, but it is not the primary choice for frames. Due to its properties, steel has been the traditional material for vehicle frames for decades: it's cost-effective, weldable and strong. However, steel is on the heavier side, so the auto industry has been increasingly shifting to a lighter option – aluminum. Its strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance and agility outperform steel, making it a top choice for automakers.

Aluminum is more expensive than steel and has been used primarily in the high-end vehicle segment. Some models known for their aluminum or aluminum hybrid structures are the Acura NSX, BMW i8, Mercedes-Benz S-Class, Jaguar F, and Tesla Model X Plaid. Many other models use a combination of aluminum and steel to achieve a balance in safety, strength, and cost-effectiveness with the demand for fuel efficiency and high performance, making aluminum a sought-after material in the automotive industry.

Yet aluminum is defined by fabricators and manufacturers as a highly reflective material. This means that a significant percentage of the light directed onto its surface gets reflected back – in laser processing, this often creates a challenge. Processing aluminum with a laser requires high power, special equipment and careful handling to protect the safety of the operator and to prevent damage to the laser equipment and worked on material.

Fonon offers a solution to this obstacle. Fonon's Titan FX Laser Cutting System lasers do not use mirrors and delicate lenses, so the reflection from metals incurs no damage to the equipment. The fiber laser source incorporates a back-reflection isolator. It's sometimes called a "beam dump" for reflective laser light that protects the source from back-reflections (or back-scatter) generated by the workpiece. The laser-cutting process is thus safe and stable.

Furthermore, the Titan FX incorporates an advanced Direct Drive Motion System, CleanCut technology and adaptive thin-to-thick fiber laser beam shaping. These benefit automotive manufacturers and other businesses that need to precisely cut highly reflective metals at production-level speed, balancing maximum accuracy with high acceleration, cut speeds and positioning. For common material processing, Fonon Titan systems achieve speeds three to four times faster than CO2 lasers of equal wattage.

Traditional flatbed laser cutting systems, which rely on rack and pinion, ball screws, or belt drives to traverse the cutting head, face limitations common to all mechanical, high-contact systems, including wear and tear of the gears, reduced belt tension over time, and damage from the inevitable accretion of contaminants, grit and dust generated by normal production conditions. Fonon's Direct Drive Motion System levitates the cutting head smoothly and quickly across the working surface area. Without ball screws, belts, or gears to deteriorate or break down, Fonon's Titan FX delivers smoother motion, higher cutting head acceleration and speed, less stress and vibration on the carriage frame, a lower system weight and decreased maintenance requirements.

Conventional laser cutting methods create an area of discoloration, weakening and stressing the material on either side of a cut, which is associated with an excessive heat-affected zone. CleanCut technology reduces or eliminates the heat-affected zone by producing a beam that is narrower and more precise than any conventional laser.

Adaptive thin-to-thick beam shaping technology automatically adjusts the laser beam's properties to process a wide range of material thicknesses. This capability is attributed to Fonon's deep understanding of the reflective characteristics of any given material when it reaches the temperature at which it transitions from a solid to a liquid or gas, driving more economical operation, superior edge quality on thick plates and high-speed cutting of thin material.

Manufacturers that make use of Fonon's Titan FX Series typically experience a 10%-30% increase in speed and accuracy and a 10%-30% decrease in kerf loss over similar systems. They are also operator- and regulation-friendly, guaranteeing operational excellence. For more information about Fonon Corporation's laser cutting technology, please visit https://fonon.com.

About Fonon Corporation

Fonon Corporation is a diversified industrial laser equipment company with a continuously growing umbrella of building-block technologies supported by patents, licenses, next-generation hardware, and proprietary metal processing Intellectual Property (IP). The company is dedicated to advancing industrial technology and designing specialized 3D metal printing systems for manufacturing purposes, representing the fastest path to Manufacturing Readiness Level 10.

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