What is water jet cutting?

There are two forms of water jet cutting, technically it is called abrasive water jet cutting when sand is used in the cutting process. True water jet cutting uses water only accelerated to speeds of 60psi to cut non hardened materials such as plastic, carpet, rubber etc... Abrasive water jet cutting is the same process with garnet (sand) introduced to the high speed water flow. This is used to cut harder materials such as metal, glass, alloys etc..

Advantages of Water jet cutting

The main advantages of water jet cutting are the variety of materials which can be cut and the thickness of material which it can cut. An abrasive water jet can cut realistically a 4-6" pc of metal, with very little taper. As for materials, glass, plastic, alloys, cardboard, foil, tile, stone etc... pretty much anything can be cut.

One other advantage is that heat is not introduced into the process. If you have projects where it is critical to keep the molecular structure intact then water jet is the way to go. The water doesn't change any of the properties, just erodes the material away.

Who can benefit from Water jet?

Many industries can benefit from the accuracy and variety of materials water jet can cut. The water jet can hold a tolerance of somewhere between .0005-.008 depending on material conditions and required tolerance of the part. Depending on your project, sometimes a few .001 are ok so time can be saved by running the part faster; other times precision is the key factor and thus slower speeds are essential to a quality part.

Water Jet cutting isn't the right process for every job. We can help you decide if it is the most effective means or maybe our Laser, Mills or Punches would be more efficient. In those areas where it is the proper choice, you can't find a more versatile cutting option.

Our machine

The Metal Shop uses a Mitsubishi Suprema Water Jet with Mitsubishi controls. We think the fact that the control is not some re-hashed windows computer makes it a much more reliable and accurate machine. Our table is 7'x13' which can handle a 5'x12' sheet. The machine is equipped with a Mitsubishi Taper Control head. Why this is important is that we can program a part to run at normal speed and still maintain our accuracy and limit taper. On machines without Taper Control, you control taper by reducing the speed which means it takes longer to to cut the part and increases your cost.

As a side note, our machine is the same one used by JoeGibbs Racing of NASCAR fame.

1.75" Steel

.250 Stainless for Cryogenic Chamber

.250 Aluminum