Has word gotten into you that water, delicate and tender looking that it is, can be utilized not only for cutting through hard and tough materials like sophisticated steel slabs but they can also cut through the most fragile of materials like cake?
Now could you even imagine how water can now be tapped in imaging a bone surgery with water as the cutting tool? If a jet of water is made even more intensive by making it pressurized to reach at least 50,000 psi, you can wield it as a powerful cutting and slicing tool. A jet of water of that magnitude and intensity can have a myriad of applications in various industries.
If you need to perforate a material for a project or you need to drill holes on an object, a waterjet machine can be used here. When placed alongside other kinds of heat-based cutting methods like plasma cutting and lasers, waterjet systems are a far better alternative.
The working technology behind the waterjet cutting process involves the use of high-pressure water flow or at times, to further intensify its cutting strength abrasive materials can be added to the water, allowing it to cut through a wide spectrum of solid and hard materials. The addition of abrasive material in water before pressurizing it will shorten the cutting time by around 75%.
The use of a waterjet system for cutting purposes, although groundbreaking, can’t be considered as something new because this technology has been around and used as early as the 1970s.
During those times, its popular application was in cutting wood-fiber tubes. However, it did not take a long while after its invention that it became one of the most preferred and most sought after cold cutting processes by many industries.
Advantages of Water Jet Machines Over Traditional Methods
- It does not create dust particles.
- It does not produce noxious gases in the atmosphere
- The cutting process can be slowed down or stopped sans inducing cosmetic damage to the material in question.
- You can operate it on any part or region of the material.
- This cold-cutting method is a qualified isothermal process.
Waterjet Application in Modern Industry
Today, there is a growing number of industries that are incorporating the waterjet cutting method into their material processing and cutting operations.
Like for instance, one of these industries includes the aerospace industry where a wide spectrum of sophisticated operations is involved. People working in the aerospace sector make use of water jet machines to cut, shape, and ream intricate aerospace parts and components.
Another sector joining the bandwagon here is the mining industry, and rightly so. There is increasing use for powerful jets of water in this industry for cutting and drilling through rocks in hard-rock mines. Besides its practical application in rock-hard mines, waterjet cutting is also in sites for coal mines.
And if you are not in the know yet, waterjet cutting has also found practical application in the hygienic cutting of various kinds of food items offered in supermarkets, starting from fruits, vegetables, meat, bread, and even cake.
Considering the complete absence of “mechanical” contact to such items, the likelihood of contamination of such perishable food items is greatly reduced.
With the popularity of waterjet cutting increasing more and more every day, an awful lot of establishments and global institutions are now initiating higher levels of research in the science of waterjet cutting.
This only goes to show that this groundbreaking method of the material cutting process has no other direction to take but to further improve in the years to come, giving us good reason to put aside traditional methods we are accustomed to using since this cold-cutting process is a qualified non-polluting method.