Advantages of Water Jet Cutting

The water jet cutting process is a cold cutting process, so there are no heat affected zones generated within the material being cut. This cold cutting process allows the cutting of metals without changing their intrinsic properties, enables the cutting of heat treated materials and no mechanical stresses are introduced into the material.

Set up times are relatively quick with most jobs requiring no fixturing or clamping due to the very low sideways forces generated when water jet cutting.

Water jet machining leaves a clean, high quality finished edge, which for many applications will require no post machining or further finishing processes.

The water jet can cut a large range of thicknesses from very thin foils to stainless steels of 150mm thick and above. No other profiling technology has such great versatility.

The process is extremely accurate with typical tolerances of +/- 0.20mm. Tolerances of +/-0.1mm can often be achieved on many types of materials. Water jet cutting lends itself to manufacturing from 'one-offs' up to large batch quantities. Water jet cutting does leave a slight angle on the cut edge; this is a factor of the cutting process and is typically about 1/3 of the diameter of the nozzle. This angle is known as the kerf angle and is explained in our glossary

Water jet cutting is environmentally friendly, using relatively small amounts of water (1-2 litres per minute) and producing no hazardous waste products. Used garnet is completely inert and the filtered, used water can simply be disposed of down the drain.

Water jet machining allows for excellent material optimisation by using the very latest CAD/CAM software for part design and nesting.

If you need some advice or would like a quotation, email us at sales@onestopfluidpower.co.uk or call 01482 610990 and we’ll work with you to see your project through.