Why Shift to Waterjet Cutting?
Waterjet cutting is a technique that relies on a jet of water to cut through materials. It can involve either just water, or water with an abrasive for harder and denser materials, such as steel. Pressure of around 40,000 to 60,000 PSI (pounds per square inch) is applied to the water, forcing it out of a precision orifice, also called jewel, and creating a well-defined stream. To give you a clue, water pressure in an average household is around 60 PSI.
Whether you are new to waterjet cutting technology at https://www.flowwaterjet.com or you have applied it to your manufacturing processes, knowing its advantages over other cutting technologies is always worthwhile, if not necessary.
Material Versatility
Waterjet cutting can be used for a whole variety of materials, such as plastics, metals, rocks, rubber, glass and practically everything else. The addition of a granular abrasive to water allows the technology to produce quality cuts on materials up to 200 mm thick.
No Heat Concerns
A big advantage of Flow waterjet cutting is that you don’t have to worry about heat affected zone (HAZ) issues, considering that the method is basically cold cutting. Cold cutting will not only give you the cleanest, most defined cuts, but it will also increase the operator’s safety as burn risks disappear from the picture.
Zero Distortion
Because it is a cold-cutting method, waterjet technology does not expose materials to heat, hence ensuring not just clean cuts but also zero distortion. In other words, you are getting perfect, bur-free results. You can also watch this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quL14Csmi_Y for more info about water jet.
No Extra Finishing
The superior cutting quality of waterjet technology guarantees pinpoint results, making any additional finishing unnecessaryWaterjet technology’s high cutting quality ensures an on-point result and avoids the need for any extra finishing. Flow waterjets are capable of making parts with extremely tight tolerances (typical tolerances range from 0.003 inch to 0.005 inch). If a material is over an inch thick, parts that will be produced will be between +/- 0.005 and 0.100 inch thick. Tolerances can vary significantly from manufacturer to manufacturer because of differences in technology and in how the machines were built.
Environment Friendliness
The rising importance of using environment-friendly processes in every kind of industry cannot be ignored. A tremendous advantage provided by waterjet cutting is that it comes with absolutely no hazardous wastes, such as fumes or gases associated with other cutting machines.
Less Labor Costs
Waterjet cutting machines are typically intended for tough, dense materials, and this normally stretches to several long hours. This couldn’t make them more ideal for so-called “lights-out” operations. But even this isn’t excused from issues, which can range from a worn wear insert to a blocked garnet supply and many more. But this has ceased to be a problem, with modern waterjet manufacturers making machines that could be set to send alerts to the operator in case there are issues. This makes “lights-out” a highly viable option nowadays, which means costs can now be decreased by a huge percentage.