Best Shear for Superalloy Foils

"Least possible burr" cutting several different soft to medium hard materials between 1^-3 and 1^-2 inch thick an over 8 feet length.

I would have no reservations suggesting laser cutting unless your quantities are exceptionally large. At these thicknesses your speed limitation, even with a low powered laser, is likely to be the carriage speed rather than the actual cutting speed.

For high quantities, slitting straight from the roll, and then cropping to length, offers a better option that shearing.

or a plama arc.

There are 263 companies listed on 'Globalspec', manufacturing shearing machines. You may find one of their products a suitable buy.

Shearing machines for superalloy foils

Thanks.

I did try to search Globalspec before asking the question, but I searched for 'Shears', not 'Shearing Machines', and may well have not done that in an appropriate place or manner...

I will try to continue your search, but still I was hoping to find someone with experience, good or bad, in shearing these thin materials. We've been doing it for many years with a hand shear, but only for pieces under a foot and a half wide. Now we need to be able to shear at least 8 feet straight cut.

There do exist some machines that roll a wedge wheel past the main cutting edge. I presume that such a machine would be slower than a standard 2-blade shear, but the ease of replacing that wheel to keep it sharp might make it a good choice. We are more interested in precision than in speed at this time.

Of course there may be other types of machines with which I'm not familiar. If so, I'm open to suggestions.

Responding to the other posts: We have tried laser cutting, some years back, but the process left a tiny bead of previously molten material along the bottom edges, which made it unusable for our purpose. It is quite possible that the process has been improved since then. I had not considered plasma for such thin material. We do commonly use waterjet for curved cuts, and it does have the advantage of being able to cut several sheets simultaneously, but it does not have the precision of a shear for straight cuts, and does leave some embedded particles of garnet or other cutting media in the cuts. The contamination can cause problems during welding or brazing.

I did try continuing your search, and several searches of my own, but as soon as I put in the 96" length or longer specification, the list is down to one supplier and 6 machines. 4 of those machines are CNC, which we don't need and can't justify. There is no image for the other two, so I have no idea what those machines are like.

Adding the terms 'superalloy foils' to the search only adds suppliers of foils and related stuff, not shears..