Abrasive water jet cutting (AWJC) technology is a very simple, environmentally friendly technology and therefore it becomes an alternative to other methods. AWJ has proved to be a fascinating manufacturing process due to its specific advantages when machining almost all engineering materials.
How to decide if waterjet cutting is the right process for your part?
There is a very simple methodology.At ALIND,we advice customers to opt for waterjet cutting, when the other cutting processes in the order, Flame cutting,Plasma cutting,Laser cutting,milling,wire cutting fail to produce their parts.
It is that simple to decide for opting to waterjet cutting process for your parts.For more detailed comparison, kindly give your time to read further…
When deciding on which option to use for your parts production process,consulting with an expert is often the best course of action; but you can also read below to understand the differences between each technique, and the advantages and disadvantages they have to offer .
How Water jet Cutting differs from other Profile cutting?
Laser,Plasma and Flame cutting are heat cutting processes.Wheras,Abrasive waterjet cutting is essentially a cold cutting process. Cold cutting means that there is almost no heat generated on the part being cut.
When comparing with Lasers
When comparing with Plasma and Flame cutting
When Comparing with EDM
When comparing with miling
When comparing with Punch Press
Waterjet Cutting Methodology
Most abrasive waterjet cutting theories explain abrasive waterjet cutting as a form of accelerated micro erosion. High pressure water at 3800 bar is passed thru a tiny orifice at a speed of approx.900 m/s – nearly three
times the speed of sound. The result is a coherent very thin extremely high velocity waterjet with a diameter of approx. 0.08 to 0.50 mm. Natural garnet sand particles are made to be sucked into the stream of the coherent waterjet and directed to hit the work piece on the cutting line with the very high velocity. There by hardest of metals and non metals can be cut or machined by micro erosion. Automating the process with programmable systems in conjunction with the CNC control provides precision and high flexibility with a wide variety of part profiles.
Thus, Abrasive jet cutting systems are considered as an efficient tool to cut work pieces which are previously considered "unmachineable" by conventional cutting methods.
Productivity of adopting to Waterjet cutting in your process
There is significant amount of material savings in waterjet cutting over conventional machining process. The abrasive stream produces minimal kerf width of 1 to 2mm, permitting tight nesting of parts. Your "scrap" metal is easier to re-use or recycle as there is no heat affected zone. Also, we use advanced nesting software to minimize material wastage. Hence you can have more parts per sheet.