Hi, i am a placement who was given a project to create something that measures the time taken for the laser to cut the metal and then put the time taken into spreadsheet and repeating this till the end of the shift of the factory. So how i do it ? What do i use to measure ? i am a computer science student and no clue on what i have to do.

 

What's the ultimate goal? Do you know? For example, is it to measure total laser on time? Amount cut per minute? Efficient utilization of the laser?

As a "computer science student," what do you know how to do? Can you program a microcontroller?

 

When the metal is cut does it fall off the main piece ? What starts and
stops the cutting operation, an operator or CNC process ? Pictures would
help.


Regards, Dana.

 

Efficient Utilization of laser. To calculate the average time taken for the laser to cut and then keep track of it over time.
I was only taught to code. I know C++ and the basics of JAVA not a very good programmer . I guess i could learnt if it requires me to use it .

 

When the metal is cut does it fall off the main piece ? What starts and
stops the cutting operation, an operator or CNC process ? Pictures would
help.


Regards, Dana.

I will be going to the factory to check out the machine in detail. Will post it as soon as i get it

 

Quick think is to measure the ON time for the laser. How to get that from the machine is the question.

 

Do you mean time to pierce the material? Because the speed at which the laser is traveling and cutting is usually programmed into the machine, so it seems pointless to me trying to measure it.

 

Do you mean time to pierce the material? Because the speed at which the laser is traveling and cutting is usually programmed into the machine, so it seems pointless to me trying to measure it.

Yea the time taken to pierce and the cut the material.

 

This is another one of those threads ... lets take the opening post step by step .....

"Hi, i am a placement who was given a project to create something that measures the time taken for the laser to cut the metal " ... A stop watch

"...and then put the time taken into spreadsheet and repeating this till the end of the shift of the factory. " ... A pen

Am I being contrary ??? I don't think so ... this is someone who is a computer science student ???

Does he want us to tell him how long it takes to cut "the metal" ??? No thickness or details given

 

Yea the time taken to pierce and the cut the material.

That would be the ON time of the laser. Not the machine ON time, just the cutting element. The start and stop of the cutting element would be part of the programming. Extracting that and transmitting the data is the problem.

 

You already know the cut time, since the machine does exactly what its told and at whatever speed you programmed it, so I totally don´ t understand why you need a separate system to measure something you already know.
If you want to know when the metal has already been pierced and if the actual pierce time programmed is too long, that is something different and would actually make sense to measure.