A decade ago CO₂ lasers cut most of the world’s sheet metal. Today, fiber dominates every new installation — and the reasons are visible on the electricity bill before they show up anywhere else.
A fiber source converts 30–40% of wall power into beam power; CO₂ manages 8–10%. On a machine running two shifts, that difference alone often covers the machine’s financing payment.
The 1.07 µm fiber wavelength is absorbed far better by metals than CO₂’s 10.6 µm, which is why a 3 kW fiber machine outcuts a 4 kW CO₂ machine on thin and mid-gauge steel — and cuts reflective metals like brass, copper and aluminum that CO₂ handles poorly or not at all.
Maintenance is the quiet killer for CO₂: mirrors to align, bellows to inspect, laser gas to refill, turbines to rebuild. A fiber source is a sealed unit with a 100,000-hour design life. Most of our customers’ maintenance schedule is reduced to lens protection windows and filter changes.
CO₂ retains a role in non-metals — acrylic, wood, textiles. But for metal fabrication, the migration is complete, and every LaserForge cutting machine is built around it.