WaterJet cutting
Water jet cutting is an innovative technology that uses an extremely high pressure water jet to cut all kinds of material, from stone to metal, glass, wood or plastics. The key advantage of Water Jet is that it has no thermal impact on the material being processed. When cutting soft and thin materials, water alone is completely sufficient; however, for harder and thicker materials, it is necessary to use water mixed with an abrasive (garnet)
Water is a material that is not readily associated with hardness and cutting ability, but under high pressure it can pierce any material. The hydroabrasive cutting process consists in eroding the material by acting upon it with a very high pressure water jet. For soft materials, such as rubber, cardboard, etc., pure water is used, while for harder materials, an additional abrasive (garnet) is used to increase the cutting speed, with a strictly defined weight per unit area and edge quality.
Each manufacturer has specific requirements for water quality. Water supplied to an amplifier is decisive for the cutting water jet due to its direct effect on the service life of equipment components such as check valves, seals and orifices.A high concentration of total dissolved solids (TDS) causes accelerated wear of any components that come into contact with water at a high-pressure due to increased abrasion of water caused by TDS. A water quality analysis should be carried out as a required part of system planning.The minimum information obtained by this test should include data such as: water pH value, total hardness, iron, manganese, conductance and silica.
Water supplied to the cutting machine should be free of hardness, its conductance should be reduced and pH optimized. Water softening is an ion exchange process that removes scale-forming minerals such as calcium. Reducing TDS (conductance) can be achieved by demineralization by the ionic (DI) or reverse osmosis (RO) methods. In general, DI or RO provide better component life than water softening, while RO is more expensive to purchase and cheaper to operate. When selecting a treatment system, it is important to remember about the correct water pH value, as excessively aggressive treated water can damage pump components.
In addition to the treatment described above, water must be filtered to remove suspended solids. Various manufacturers supply different sizes of final filters, usually down to a nominal value of 0.45um
Watersystem offers single units and ready-made sets of units with different capacities, meeting the water quality requirements of such cutting machine manufacturers as Bystronic, Eckert, WaterJet, TechJet, Flow