According to the research of foreign market research institutions, fiber laser cutting machines will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7-8% in the next few years, reaching 2.35 billion US dollars by 2024. In Europe and the United States, the demand for fiber laser cutting machines is increasing, prompting the market to increase the demand for advanced fiber laser cutting machines. At the same time, with the growth of demand in the automotive industry, the intensification of the competitive environment, the competition of new products, the increase in general industrial expenditures, the advancement of the conversion process of new and old kinetic energy, the application scenarios and use of fiber laser cutting machines and other factors, all will promote development of the Chinese market. In recent years, due to my country’s technological status in the field of fiber laser cutting machines, the market share has increased year by year, and it has outstanding performance in the global fiber laser cutting machine industry.
As far as the current development status is concerned, fiber lasers will still be the mainstream light source for industrial applications in the next 10 years, and have a stable position in terms of functions and applications. According to statistics from the Laser Processing Committee, in 2020, from the perspective of the laser cutting market, the output value will increase by 15% compared with 2019, the installed capacity of equipment will increase by 40%, and domestic light sources will dominate. 1,500 domestic light source 12kW power laser cutting machines are installed. Now, the domestic laser cutting technology, supporting components, software and hardware have been further optimized, and the cutting efficiency has been significantly improved. The 40kW domestic light source has been sold. In the future, with the help of new infrastructure, including the application of construction machinery, laser cutting equipment represented by fiber laser cutting machines will continue to usher in a new round of growth.
Now laser bevel cutting is also a hot spot. Many domestic enterprises have begun to invest in research and development, and have achieved remarkable results. High-power laser equipment has the function of bevel cutting, which can complete the bevel processing of traditional cutting, welding, milling and other processes at one time, greatly improving processing efficiency and product quality, adopting high-precision processing technology, saving resources and costs, and flexibly cutting different thicknesses Special-shaped materials are conducive to promoting technological innovation and equipment upgrades in the application industry.
High-power lasers occupy a dominant position in the field of laser processing, among which laser cutting is the mainstream in the current market. With the development of fiber lasers, laser cutting equipment has become a standard product. Since 2019, the cost-effectiveness of 10,000-watt-class fiber lasers has begun to break through the dominance of plasma and flame processing in the field of metal processing such as thick plates, and has accelerated the replacement of traditional contact and low-precision metal processing methods. In recent years, in the field of metal cutting, fiber lasers have been developing towards high power, gradually replacing traditional cutting methods in terms of cutting thickness and speed, environmental protection and safety.
Another laser processing market is the 10,000-watt high-power laser processing market. The size of this part of the market will reach about US$2.1 billion by 2020 and will show a steady growth trend in the next five years. Metal cutting now accounts for 70% of kilowatt applications, with the other two being metal welding and additive manufacturing. Although the industry expects that the metal welding market will surpass the cutting market in the future, in terms of current sales revenue, metal cutting applications have the fastest growth. The 10,000-watt-class fiber laser is expected to achieve a $2.5 billion metal cutting application in 2022.
There is no doubt that the fiber laser cutting machine industry is undergoing a new round of transformation and upgrading. In order to obtain greater development space, the functions of equipment must be continuously expanded to produce new equipment suitable for different materials and processes. Optical fiber cutting equipment is mainly used in new infrastructure, rail transit, shipbuilding, aerospace, automobiles, engineering machinery, medical equipment, kitchen and bathroom hardware, lighting, sheet metal processing and other fields. With unique technologies and solutions, higher State-of-the-art intelligence, automation, and digital technologies escort high-quality, high-precision, high-efficiency, and high-flexibility processing and manufacturing.
