Water jet cutter
A water jet cutter, also known as a water jet or waterjet, is an industrial tool capable of cutting a wide variety of materials using an extremely high-pressure jet of water, or a mixture of water and an abrasive substance. The term abrasive jet refers specifically to the use of a mixture of water and an abrasive to cut hard materials such as metal, stone or glass, while the terms pure waterjet and water-only cutting refer to waterjet cutting without the use of added abrasives, often used for softer materials such as wood or rubber.
Waterjet cutting is often used during the fabrication of machine parts. It is the preferred method when the materials being cut are sensitive to the high temperatures generated by other methods; examples of such materials include plastic and aluminium. Waterjet cutting is used in various industries, including mining and aerospace, for cutting, shaping, and reaming.
History
Waterjet
While using high-pressure water for erosion dates back as far as the mid-1800s with hydraulic mining, it was not until the 1930s that narrow jets of water started to appear as an industrial cutting device. In 1933, the Paper Patents Company in Wisconsin developed a paper metering, cutting, and reeling machine that used a diagonally moving waterjet nozzle to cut a horizontally moving sheet of continuous paper. These early applications were at low pressure and restricted to soft materials like paper.Waterjet technology evolved in the post-war era as researchers around the world searched for new methods of efficient cutting systems. In 1956, Carl Johnson of Durox International in Luxembourg developed a method for cutting plastic shapes using a thin stream high-pressure water jet, but those materials, like paper, were soft materials. In 1958, Billie Schwacha of North American Aviation developed a system using ultra-high-pressure liquid to cut hard materials. This system used a pump to deliver a hypersonic liquid jet that could cut high-strength alloys such as PH15-7-MO stainless steel. Used to cut honeycomb laminate for the Mach 3 North American XB-70 Valkyrie, this cutting method resulted in delaminating at high speed, requiring changes to the manufacturing process.
While not effective for the XB-70 project, the concept was valid and further research continued to evolve waterjet cutting. In 1962, Philip Rice of Union Carbide explored using a pulsing waterjet at up to to cut metals, stone, and other materials. Research by S.J. Leach and G.L. Walker in the mid-1960s expanded on traditional coal waterjet cutting to determine the ideal nozzle shape for high-pressure waterjet cutting of stone, and Norman Franz in the late 1960s focused on waterjet cutting of soft materials by dissolving long-chain polymers in the water to improve the cohesiveness of the jet stream. In the early 1970s, the desire to improve the durability of the waterjet nozzle led Ray Chadwick, Michael Kurko, and Joseph Corriveau of the Bendix Corporation to come up with the idea of using corundum crystal to form a waterjet orifice, while Norman Franz expanded on this and created a waterjet nozzle with an orifice as small as that operated at pressures up to. John Olsen, along with George Hurlburt and Louis Kapcsandy at Flow Research, further improved the commercial potential of the water jet by showing that treating the water beforehand could increase the operational life of the nozzle.
High pressure
High-pressure vessels and pumps became affordable and reliable with the advent of steam power. By the mid-1800s, steam locomotives were common and the first efficient steam-driven fire engine was operational. By the turn of the century, high-pressure reliability improved, with locomotive research leading to a sixfold increase in boiler pressure, some reaching. Most high-pressure pumps at this time, though, operated around.High-pressure systems were further shaped by the aviation, automotive, and oil industries. Aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing developed seals for hydraulically boosted control systems in the 1940s, while automotive designers followed similar research for hydraulic suspension systems. Higher pressures in hydraulic systems in the oil industry also led to the development of advanced seals and packing to prevent leaks.
These advances in seal technology, plus the rise of plastics in the post-war years, led to the development of the first reliable high-pressure pump. The invention of Marlex by Robert Banks and John Paul Hogan of the Phillips Petroleum Company required a catalyst to be injected into the polyethylene. McCartney Manufacturing Company in Baxter Springs, Kansas, began manufacturing these high-pressure pumps in 1960 for the polyethylene industry. Flow Industries in Kent, Washington set the groundwork for commercial viability of waterjets with John Olsen's development of the high-pressure fluid intensifier in 1973, a design that was further refined in 1976. Flow Industries then combined the high-pressure pump research with their waterjet nozzle research and brought waterjet cutting into the manufacturing world.
Abrasive waterjet
While cutting with water is possible for soft materials, adding an abrasive turned the water jet into a modern machining tool for all materials. This began in 1935 when the idea of adding an abrasive to the water stream was developed by Elmo Smith for liquid abrasive blasting. Smith's design was further refined by Leslie Tirrell of the Hydroblast Corporation in 1937, resulting in a nozzle design that created a mix of high-pressure water and abrasive for the purpose of wet blasting.The first publications on modern abrasive waterjet cutting were published by Mohamed Hashish in the 1982 BHR proceedings showing, for the first time, that waterjets with relatively small amounts of abrasives are capable of cutting hard materials such as steel and concrete. The March 1984 issue of the Mechanical Engineering magazine showed more details and materials cut with AWJ such as titanium, aluminium, glass, and stone. Mohamed Hashish was awarded a patent on forming AWJ in 1987. Hashish, who also coined the new term abrasive waterjet, and his team continued to develop and improve the AWJ technology and its hardware for many applications. A critical development was creating a durable mixing tube that could withstand the power of the high-pressure AWJ, and it was Boride Products development of their ROCTEC line of ceramic tungsten carbide composite tubes that significantly increased the operational life of the AWJ nozzle. Current work on AWJ nozzles is on micro abrasive waterjets so that cutting with jets smaller than in diameter can be commercialized.
Working with Ingersoll-Rand Waterjet Systems, Michael Dixon implemented the first production practical means of cutting titanium sheets—an abrasive waterjet system very similar to those in widespread use today. By January 1989, that system was being run 24 hours a day producing titanium parts for the B-1B largely at Rockwell's North American Aviation facility in Newark, Ohio.
Today, there are two different types of Abrasive Waterjets:
Abrasive water suspension jet (AWSJ) cutting
The abrasive water suspension jet – often called “slurry jet” or “water abrasive suspension jet” – is a specific type of abrasive water jet, which is used for waterjet cutting. In contrast to the abrasive water injector jet, the abrasive water suspension jet is characterised by the fact that the mixing of abrasive and water takes place before the nozzle. This has the effect that, in contrast to AWIJ, the jet consists of only two components: the water and the abrasive.Since there are only 2 components in the AWSJ, the acceleration of the abrasive grains by the water takes place with a significantly increased efficiency compared to the AWIJ. The abrasive grains become faster with the WASS than with the WAIS for the same hydraulic power of the system. Therefore, comparatively deeper or faster cuts can be made with the AWSJ.
AWSJ cutting, in contrast to the AWIJ cutting process described below, can also be used for mobile cutting applications and cutting underwater, in addition to machining demanding materials. Examples include bomb disposal, as well as the dismantling of offshore installations or the dismantling of reactor pressure vessel installations in nuclear power plants.
Abrasive Water Injector Jet (AWIJ) cutting
The AWIJ is generated by a water jet that passes through a mixing chamber after exiting the water nozzle and enters a focusing tube at the exit of the mixing chamber. The interaction of the water jet in the mixing chamber with the air inside creates negative pressure, the water jet entrains air particles. This negative pressure is used for the pneumatic transport of the abrasive into the chamber.After contact with the abrasive material in the mixing chamber with the water jet, the individual abrasive grains are accelerated and entrained in the direction of the focusing tube. The air used as a carrier medium for transporting the abrasive into the mixing chamber also becomes part of the AWIJ, which now consists of three components. In the focusing tube, which is optimised in its length for this purpose, the abrasive is further accelerated and the AWIJ ideally leaves the focusing tube at the maximum possible abrasive grain speed.