Copyright Society of Manufacturing Engineers Sep 2002

Although J. Miller has used an Italian-made laser for several years, the company has found its new machine-a Haas ZM-100-to be faster and more accurate than other lasers on its shop floor. Based on Haas's Mini Mill, the machine uses a 100-W sealed COZ laser to cut gasket materials including steel and other metals.

J. Miller uses automatic flat-platen machines to cut many of its gaskets out of rubber, paper, silicone, and other materials. But the laser is speeding production of complicated gaskets, according to company president Dennis Miller. "Instead of making a tool to cut a complicated gasket, we can use the laser to save hours of production time," he says. "Anything that can be die-cut can be done on the laser."

Advantages of laser cutting include simplicity of handling and the lack of stretching and distortion often caused by die-cut machines. "We were trying to die-cut a Teflon ring and having a lot of problems with it stretching during removal from the die," says Richard Miller, production manager and Dennis Miller's son. "The Haas laser cut the ring in a minute and held the tolerances we wanted."

J. Miller uses a vacuum fixture mounted to the table to hold material in place during cutting. "Since the laser does not make contact with the material, you don't have to worry about the material moving. But the vacuum system sucks out any smoke produced by the laser cutting, and safely clears away any fumes," Richard Miller says.

One of J. Miller's claims to fame has been an ability to fabricate gaskets out of almost anything except metal, Dennis Miller says. But the Haas laser has changed that. "We could make gaskets out of silicone, rubber, paper, plastics, Mylar, ceramic cloth-anything but metal," he explains. "With this machine, we can now cut metals up to 116" [1.6 mm)] thick using assist gas. We've been experimenting with stainless and cold-rolled steel-- mainly small shims and spacers."

Richard Miller says the control gives the Haas laser a big advantage over other lasers. "I didn't have any Haas CNC experience, but still was able to pick up the control quickly." He especially likes features such as single-block feed and the ability to program subroutines at the control. "With the Haas, I can stop it wherever I want and change something. I'm doing block editing," he explains. "I can create subroutine programs to get maximum yield out of the material."

Speed is yet another advantage of the machine. "It will do 500 ipm [12.7 m/min], while our other laser can only do 100 ipm [2.5 m/min]," Richard notes. "I have run stuff on the other laser and it takes a minute and a half. On the Haas, it takes me half the time. The laser saves us time and lets us better utilize all of the material."

Richard designs the gaskets in AutoCAD, then imports his work into a CAD/CAM package called MillWrite to generate G-code. "The MillWrite software has saved me hours in programming, and I can edit the program at the machine later while I am running the job, so I don't have to go back to the computer," he says.

Richard Miller likes the accuracy, speed, and reliability of the laser, but wishes it had larger travels. Haas's new Z3-500 is a larger machine that will offer a 500-W laser and travels of 40 x 20 x 25" (1 x 0.5 x 0.6 m) to handle larger