In this post we discuss the many options available when choosing waterjet cutting for your profile cutting needs – We work with each customer to find the best balance to suit application & budget!

Waterjet cutting qualities

One advantage of waterjet cutting is you can choose what quality of cut you want on each part. You can also select certain areas of a part like holes or sections that are an interference fit.

These qualities are:

1. Great for roughing parts out that require a secondary process like milling or other types of machining. Typical examples of jobs that use this are thick aluminium that will then go to a machinist (as seen below)

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2. Reasonable cut that will leave a finish suitable for structural and non cosmetic applications. Things like brackets, templates or parts the get welded together (as seen below).

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3. Good cut finish, Most of our jobs will be cut on this setting unless specified. This gives a nice smooth to touch surface (as seen below).

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4. Very nice surface finish but will have more taper from top to bottom of cut than quality (as seen below).

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5. Quality 5 is generally for cosmetic items that require a perfectly straight cut. 5. High quality cut perfect for interference fit. Direct contact with end user with no post processing required (as seen below).

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Time of cut.

Time of cut is extremely variable, Things like how many arcs or corners and the radius of these that require the machine to slow down its travel speed. The times given were worked out on the circles in the picture which had no details but just one continuous arc.

1. 40% faster than quality 3

2. 33% faster than quality 3

3. Default 0

4. 35% Slower than quality 3

5. 75% slower than quality 3

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Below are the some side by side examples of the cutting quality, see the numbers above each cut.

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