Water jet cutting is a manufacturing process that utilizes pressurized water to cut the materials. The machine that performs the water jet cutting is also called the water jet cutter.
1. The working principle of water jet cutting:
- Use a high-pressure water pump to pressurize ordinary tap water to the high-pressure water flow. The pressure can be as high as 60,000 psi (pounds per square inch) or about 4000 bars.
- The pressurized water flows through the tubes to the cutting head.
- There is a small hole in the cutting head to turn the high-pressure water into an extremely thin stream of water, which is utilized to cut a wide range of materials.
2. Depends on whether an abrasive is used or not, there are two basic types of water jet cutting processes :
Abrasive Waterjet .
In this cutting technique, the abrasive particles are mixed with the pressurized water in the chamber, which locates before the injection
nozzle.
The commonly used abrasive particles are garnet, silicon carbide, or aluminum oxide. The choice of abrasives depends on the material’s thickness or hardness.
This cutting process is suitable to cut hard materials, such as metals, stones, glasses, and ceramics. However, there are a few materials that can’t be cut by the abrasive waterjet. For example, tempered glass, diamonds, and some advanced ceramics.Pure Waterjet.
In this cutting process, it uses pure water without adding the abrasive particles. The pump pressurized the pure water to high-pressure and the water is injected out of an orifice to cut the workpiece.
Because it doesn’t have the additional abrasive particles, the pure water cutting stream is singularly fine and is less invasive compared to the abrasive waterjet process, also it will not add any additional pressure on
the workpiece.
This process is good for cutting soft materials like rubber, foam, food, and thin plastic sheet.
3. Some advantages of water jet cutting.
Waterjet machining has a lot of advantages, here to list some of the general advantages:
No heat-affected zone (HAZ)
For most hot cutting processes, there is a heat-affected zone after the cutting, however, almost no heat is generated during the cutting process,
the result is that there isn’t a heat-affected zone, heat distortion, and hardened edges, also the properties of the material will not be changed.
No tool changes are required.
The waterjet process uses a high-pressure water or water with abrasives particles as cutting power, which doesn’t need any cutting tool. By adjusting the cutting beam parameters, the same nozzle can be used for cutting different materials and thicknesses. It highly improves cutting efficiency.
It is environmentally friendly.
The waterjet machining process is sustainable, it does not generate any toxic fumes, nor form any slag, the cutting medium of water or abrasives is recyclable, and no cooling oils are required due to the water acts as a coolant in this process, which reduces the impact on the environment.
Conclusion:
The water jet machining process is widely used on producing parts in a variety of industries. No matter it is abrasive waterjet or pure water jet cutting, both will not create a heat-affected zone and are environmentally friendly. Water jet machining is a cost-effective manufacturing process for cutting most materials.