Open House AMRC / Boeing

I had a great trip and the open house was fantastic.  AMRC / Boeing / Rolls Royce have a phenomenal facility and now with the WARDJet waterjet they have added more capability.  And as for the angels – I was wondering if this is what is in store for us long term…. (taken in Barcelona over the weekend!)

Rich

Olivetti Laptop from 1986

OK – so I was going through some stuff at home and found my first laptop from 1986.  An Olivetti made in Italy – top of the line personal computer.  What was most amazing is we plugged it in and it fired up as if I had turned it off yesterday.  It runs off two floppy drives with minimal hard drive memory.

We have come a long way with the X-Classic controller and our own software division that even makes our own circuit boards!  Who would ever have guessed

Rich

Waterjet Talks at the AMRC

 Yesterday and today have been fantastic. Thanks to everyone who came to the open house at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Centre with Boeing to learn more about WARDJet, Wightman Stewart and the waterjet cutting systems that we build. It has been an absolute pleasure introducing our people, our company and our technology to you. I hope to make it back to England very soon. 

-Rich

WARDJet Waterjet at the University of Sheffield AMRC with Boeing

We're very excited to have one of our ZX-513 Waterjet Cutting Machines on the floor of the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Centre with Boeing. If you are in the area, feel free to stop by during our open house with Wightman Stewart (our UK distributor) Tuesday October 20th or Wednesday October 21st. You will be able to see the machine in action cutting parts, and I will also be giving a presentation twice daily featuring live video with our production facility in Tallmadge OH - where you will be able to see 5-Axis parts being cut with our Psy-Winder 5-Axis Waterjet Cutting Head. It will be fun to say the least!
-Rich

Waterjet Taper Compensation With Psy-Winder

A quick video shows taper comp in action cutting a hole using the Psy-Winder 5-Axis Waterjet Cutting Head.  http://wardjet.com/videolibrary.asp 

Rich

Cutting Corn with Waterjet

So are you hungry and looking for good quality trimmed corn?  If you have a waterjet this should be a breeze.  Most people think waterjets are used mainly for engineering applications, but the cutting and dicing and processing of food with waterjet is a huge business.  We have cut the most unusual over the years.

Rich

Orifice / Nozzle / Pressure / Abrasive Question

Occasionally questions are raised regarding different aspects of waterjet cutting.   If you have any questions please feel free to post them on the blog and I will answer them.  The following is my take on these questions.

The question is stated below.

 

“I am trying to find out a bit more information on nozzles and rubies.  We currently use 0.8mm nozzle diameters matched to rubies of the correct diameter- we run with the 120 mesh garnet exclusively. This setup is perfect for our main work but I'm wondering if we are missing a trick or two by sticking to this setup.

What are the advantages of running bigger nozzle and ruby diameters? If we need to cut thick steel, say 15mm, would a larger nozzle diameter be useful?

What we are finding is the 0.8mm nozzles stall on heavy garnet loads, for instance, if we set the garnet flow above 3 on the secondary hopper the mixing chamber backs up because the 0.8mm nozzle can't drag the garnet through the small internal diameter fast enough.

I am also curious about stone cutting and the advantages (or not) of running with 80 mesh garnet?

So far we've stuck with a setup which gives good results on the thin gauge steels we work with but is there more we could be doing? Are there advantages we're missing out on?

Thanks for any input.”

 

Answers to the questions

Most answers to these questions are at www.waterjetuniversity.com or at http://www.wardjet.com/Waterjet-University.asp

Orifice / Nozzle ratio

The orifice / nozzle ratio is critical to your cutting power generated by the cutting head.  Generally a ratio of 3 : 1 is held, so the orifice should be about 1/3^rd inside diameter of the nozzle ID.  There are some companies that push this to as low as 2.3 : 1  The effect of this is a more powerful stream but you run the risk of accelerated wear on the nozzle ID and wearing it out-of-round more rapidly.  Companies that push a lower ratio will typically suggest you rotate the nozzle every day so any out-of-round wear is evened out. 

Larger orifice / nozzle combination

Make sure you don’t exceed the limit of the orifice size per the next paragraph.  But as long as you are within the limits of the pump capacity, an increase in orifice/nozzle balanced with an increase in abrasive will result in faster cutting.  See the charts   http://www.wardjet.com/waterjet-university/02-Waterjet-Relationship-Parameters.asp

Size of Orifice

There is an optimum orifice that should be used with your pump.  The charts found at http://www.wardjet.com/waterjet-university/02-Waterjet-Relationship-Parameters.asp  will indicate what these are.  If you use a smaller orifice than the pump is capable of supporting, you will not be working at maximum cutting power.  If you use a larger orifice, your pump will not be able to keep up with the demand for high pressure water and a few things will happen.   1 – Your pump will try to keep up with the increased demand, over stroke and shut down.  Bear in mind not all pumps have sensors that will shut down the pump.  2 – Your pump will stroke harder and the pressure will drop to balance the amount of water going out the orifice.  This is not a good situation as your pump will be slamming and working too hard.  I am presuming you have an intensifier pump here.  Have a look on the chart and make sure you are using the correct orifice.  If you are not sure let me know what horse power you have on your pump.

Abrasive Flow

There is an optimum amount of abrasive that should be used with any orifice / nozzle combination operating at a certain pressure.  The chart here shows this.    You will notice the graphs show that too much abrasive will choke the system and result in slowing down your cut.  So check where you are in your system and adjust the flow accordingly.

Size of Abrasive

The size of abrasive you use will also affect cutting speed, edge finish, taper and burr.  Size of abrasive is also critical when it comes to piercing fragile and brittle materials.  So if you are cutting mainly thin alloys and steel, a 120 mesh will give you less burr than if you were using 80 mesh.  The difference in cutting speed in thin alloys is also not so obvious with different size mesh abrasives.  However if you start to cut thicker materials, you will quickly find mesh size makes a big difference.  A larger mesh is more aggressive and has more momentum to impart in the cutting process as it erodes its way through the material.  Also burr generally is not an issue in thicker materials.  When we were a job shop we ran 50 mesh as much as possible.

Stone Cutting

Generally 80 mesh is fine for cutting stone.  Make sure you perfect low pressure pierce procedures and that you always do a dynamic / moving pierce.  Cutting stone is another whole blog, but certainly waterjet is very successful at cutting glass, stone and many other brittle and fragile materials.

I hope these pointers help.  It looks like you are in the UK?  I will be at an open house we are having in Sheffield at the Boeing / Rolls Royce / University of Sheffield Facility October 21^st and 22^nd.  You are welcome to come and visit and chat.

Rich

 

 

 

Waterjet Cutting Laminated Glass

OK so we cut peaches and steel in the last week.  Well here is some laminated glass cut using the Psy-Winder 5-Axis Waterjet Cutting Head into a 3D shape.  We were able to pierce and cut multiple holes and cones without delaminating or shattering the glass.  This was achieved using our VSMH - Variable Speed Mini Hopper - which changes the abrasive flow to the cutting head automatically, while we change the pressure at the pump.  All from within the program and all automatically while we stand and watch.

Rich

Waterjet Cutting Peaches

Yes peaches cut great at high speeds with a waterjet.  Another application of pure water only cutting.

Rich

Cutting of Angle Iron with Waterjet

We love cutting anything that is not flat on our waterjet machines.  Here we are trimming heavy angle iron lengths that are far too long for the ZX-813 unit.  We simply support the angle, cut the first section, then move the angle along, index the position of the angle and cut the next section.  Piece of cake.

Rich