Our Water Jet Machine

Water Jet #1: Flow WMC2 dynamic water jet cutting machine. Single cutting head, 3x2 metre cutting table, 60,000 psi pump and dynamic cutting head which compensates for divergence of the jet producing a square cut edge without taper. This machine will cut just about any material up to 100mm thick using the software supplied by Flow. However, thicknesses over 100mm are possible to cut but require Cirrus Laser to perform cutting tests to achieve the correct cutting parameters. The water jet process uses a stream of high pressure water to either directly cut soft materials (paper, rubber) or for hard materials an injection of garnet is used to cut the material. Garnet is naturally mined fine sand that is sieved to produce a known grain size and we can use 80 mesh, 120 mesh or 200 mesh grain size. Grain size diminishes with higher mesh numbers and although the cut edge is smoother with smaller grain size the cut time and piece part cost is increased. The cut edge is similar in appearance to a sand blasted finish and depending on the application we change the cutting speed to achieve a pre-determined finish.