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Machine and Engineering

How to Slice Through Steel With a Water Jet Cutter?

If you are familiar with some of the leading machine shops and metal fabrication centers in the country, you’d agree with us in saying that a water jet cutter is one of their most ubiquitous tools. This groundbreaking tool can be used in cutting or slicing through a wide spectrum of hard, solid materials that include metals. This is made possible by making use of a high-pressure stream of water.

The concept of water cutting through metal may sound amazing. But if you will get water to flow through in an extremely fast manner, it will cut through any solid object, and metals are no exemption to that.

water jet cutter

The key to making water slice through metal is by keeping the spray of water extremely strong and coherent. Waterjets can cut or slice through solid objects simply because they are designed to channel the high-pressure water spray through an extremely small and narrow jeweled nozzle. Unlike traditional friction-based metal cutters, water jet systems will never get. Most important, the overheating issue is absent here.

Before the use of water jet systems became the norm in the fabrication industry, you could cut only one piece of metal at a time using any metal cutting mechanical process of your choice.

Needless to say, the process was expensive, intensive, and time-consuming, too. Computer-manned waterjet systems found their way through many industries for cutting soft and hard materials.

A plain water jet system would be leaving the nozzle at around 900 mph. The most recent models we’ve seen available in the market today are capable of cutting through 2 thousandths of an inch. Their jet speeds can reach around Mach 3.

What materials can you slice through using a water jet cutter?

  • Wood
  • Granite
  • Marble
  • Metal
  • Stone
  • Plastic
  • Stainless steel

Waterjet systems can be made to cut through a “sandwich” of different objects, and slice through them up to 4 inches thick. The entire process would be dust-free, odorless, and relatively heat-free. If you are handling an extremely thin material, keep in mind that this water jet system can manage to slice through materials as thin as 5 thousands of an inch.

How Fast Can a Water Jet Cut?

An abrasive type of waterjet system is capable of slicing through half-inch thick titanium. This will go at the rate of 7 inches every minute if a 30HP pump will be utilized for this purpose. The abrasive jet will move in a fashion that is comparable to a slowed-down plotter pen.

Abrasive type of waterjet can be applied to the following:

  • Suctioning/removal of materials stuck inside train tunnels. 
  • Virtually cut any shape in bullet-proof glass. 
  • Removal of marking strips in highways. 
  • Making sculpture. 
  • Cutting logs in a sawmill.

Waterjet systems can be taken advantage of also in cutting diapers and candy bars. When it comes to oil exploration drilling, waterjets are installed at the bottom to help in expediting the process of drilling. When used alongside directional jets, waterjets can be utilized in boring a road for routing cable for fiber optic.