Waterjet Cutter Product

Overview

A waterjet cutter slices material with a stream of water pressurized to around 4000 bar and forced through a tiny jewel orifice, reaching roughly three times the speed of sound. For metal, glass, stone, and thick stock the bare water jet is loaded with garnet abrasive inside the Abrasive Cutting Head, turning it into a cold grinding stream that cuts almost any material without a heat-affected zone.

The machine is built around a rigid Frame & Catch Tank: a steel weldment carrying a water-filled catch tank and sacrificial support slats that hold the workpiece while absorbing the spent jet below it. A bridge-style X-Y Gantry rides the frame on profiled linear guides, driven by servo motors through a rack-and-pinion X axis and a ball-screw Y axis. The Z Axis & Cutting Head carries the cutting head and a standoff sensor that keeps the nozzle a set distance off the part.

How it works

Inlet water is conditioned by the Water Treatment & Chiller — softened, filtered to sub-micron, boosted, and held at a stable temperature so the high-pressure seals last. The Intensifier Pump is an intensifier: a hydraulic power unit drives a large hydraulic piston that pushes a much smaller water plunger, multiplying pressure by about twenty to one up to 4140 bar. Check valves and a pulsation attenuator turn the reciprocating stroke into a steady high-pressure supply.

That supply travels through stainless High-Pressure Plumbing — coned-and-threaded tubing and rotary swivels that feed the moving head without leaking at pressure. At the head the water passes the sapphire orifice and forms a coherent jet. Garnet from the Abrasive Delivery hopper is metered into the mixing tube, where the jet entrains it and accelerates the grit into the cut.

Every motion comes from the CNC Control Cabinet cabinet: an SoC running the CAM toolpath, a motion controller, and three servo drives that command the gantry and Z axis while pacing the pierce and traverse feed rates. Spent water and garnet settle in the catch tank and are pulled out by the Drain & Abrasive Removal system for disposal.