Water Jet...aka abrasive water cutting

[Chris V]

So I've been working at OMAX the past couple days...have had a chance to work there on and off over the years doing electrical, but finally came home with a little 'bling' today, thought I'd show it off. Cool people, damn cool machines. http://www.omax.com/

This is an 'unfinished' rough piece that hasn't been deburred in a tumbler type setup yet...

[doc]

Pretty cool! Is getting something made expensive? What do you have to furnish? An engineering drawing?

doc

[fusername]

meh, post a pic when its finished, that thing sure is rough, it'll prolly look better then :shocl:

[Tom Simon]

Water jet is a real powerful fabrication tool... up to 80,000psi of water pressure and garnet siphoned intot he water stream to aid in cutting most materials.

Friends of mine have been using it to make brackets, flanges, and a whole host of other things from either plate steel, aluminum, or (for my day job) optical glass. If you can geometrically describe the shape, write a program with master cam or any number of machine tool software packages, you can feed it into a waterjet machine and cut it out. There are limitations with thickness, depending on machine and material, the curf also gets wider and tapered as material gets thicker.