Omax Corporation

OMAX Corporation is a large American provider of multi-axis water jet systems for use in the fabrication and manufacturing industry. It is the largest water jet machining company in the United States of America. Ref=https://www.industrynet.com/blog/top-11-us-waterjet-cutting-companies

WWW Official Site

History

OMAX was established in 1993 by Dr. John Cheung and Dr. John Olsen. They made high-pressure abrasive jet machining to erode material to form intricate shapes or specific edge shapes.

Aviation High School Robotics

Each year OMAX sponsors the FIRST Robotics Competition team from Aviation [High School (Washington)|Aviation High School]. OMAX supervises the Aviation "Skunkworks" Team as members cut parts for their robot at OMAX's headquarters. The Aviation High Robotics team won the Creativity Award at the FIRST Championship held in St. Louis, Missouri in April 2011.

Competitors

OMAX's largest competitor is Flow International Corp. To avoid competition Flow International attempted to buy OMAX for $109 million, but because of the downturn in the economy, the offer was reduced to $75 million. In 2009 it was announced that Flow called off the merger stating "We believe that our path forward alone is far superior to one combined with OMAX at the wrong price". John Olsen co-founder of OMAX stated that had the companies merged there would have certainly been layoffs. Other competitors include Jet Edge Waterjets, and ESAB Cutting Products.