WATERJET TECHNOLOGIES
consumption,” Pedrazas said. “Abrasives are the biggest cost factor—it’s something between 50–75% of operating costs are in garnet.”
Need for Speed
By cutting faster at higher pressures, waterjet op- erators can substantially reduce cutting times, and abrasives consumed, he noted. “We have a 90,000- psi, 125-hp [93.2-kW] motor, and we can run two cutting heads at a time,” Pedrazas said. KMT’s broad line of pumps range from 15-hp (11.2-kW) models to the 125-hp motors powering the highest- pressure waterjets. “In the metalcutting industry, at 90,000-psi, two cutting heads with 0.011" [0.28 mm] orifi ces can easily cut metal at once,” Pedrazas said. “What people ask is ‘How do I reduce our abrasive costs and improve productivity?’” Higher pressures equate with faster cutting and better productivity, said Chip Burnham, global vice president of
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marketing for Flow International Corp. (Kent, WA). Among the key trends in waterjets is raising the waterjet pressure to improve the cutting effi ciency, he said. “In our experience of working with countless shops across the world, a few pur- suits are common in manufacturing: lowering production time and costs; reducing demand on high-skill labor; and maxi- mizing shop-fl oor equipment reliability and uptime,” Burnham said. “To meet these common goals, Flow has worked hard to improve productivity of waterjets through raising pressure, and thereby cutting effi ciency, simplifying programming and operation by making the software smarter, and offering a variety of in-house service contracts to reduce or eliminate machine maintenance.” The Flow HyperJet’s 94,000-psi (648.1-MPa) pump, which delivers signifi cantly higher operating pressure, can reduce waterjet cycle times and operating cost, he said. “Raising the pump ratings from 60,000 psi [413.7 MPa] to 94,000 psi increased waterjet stream velocity up to nearly Mach 4,” Burnham added, “and with this advancement, the waterjet becomes more effi cient. The HyperJet 94,000 psi pump delivers a 30–50% reduction in abrasive [which is half the operating cost of a 60,000-psi abrasive waterjet system], while increasing cutting speed. Since the invention of waterjet cutting in the early ’70s, water pressure has always gone up, as has effi ciency.”
No Downtime Allowed
Along with faster cutting speeds, waterjet users expect more reliability than ever from their equipment, as any
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Photo courtesy Jet Edge Inc.
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