Water Jet Cutting very cool

[canuck750]

I have had some parts made up from a shop who offers water jet cutting, making up repro signal light brackets for the V7 Sport,

2 day turn around service and smooth perfect cut pieces (3mm thick steel plate).



Rear brackets before and after bending to shape

[Demar]

Nice work Canuck.... looks good.

[Sasquatch Jim]

 So they cut steel just by hosing it with water,

[canuck750]

So they cut steel just by hosing it with water,

water and grit in a very concentrated jet at very high pressure computer controlled, very quick and each one is exactly the same, the holes are water jet cut as well and there are no sharp edges.

[Triple Jim]

Nice parts.  I get a lot of parts laser cut.  I tried a local water jet company once, but it didn't work out.  Not because of the quality, but because of the poorly run company.  Laser cutting can be really good too, of course, but with any CNC work, a lot depends on the condition of the equipment and the skill of the operator.  Here's a photo of some of the parts I've had cut.  The holes were finish machined in this case, of course.  The material is 3/16" stainless steel, and the parts are under $3 each, material and labor, without the machining and finishing.  Accuracy is well within plus or minus 0.010"

[tris]

..... and if you want mega accurate profiles  - look at wire cut EDM

We're looking at it for cutting the fir tree root in gas turbine rotor discs for fitting the compressor blades 

Cheaper and much more available these days than good old broaching


The interesting thing these days that with parts similar to those in your 1st picture Canuck is that with modern CNC machining centres in some instances its as cheap (or cheaper) to sling a big ole block in the machine and just chommer it out of the solid

[Orange Guzzi]

The irony of water jet cutting is, Flow Robotic, used the machine shop/fab shop I was plant manager of to make there parts for their machines.  They are an assembly plant and do not make their own parts.  We used convention machinery to make parts.  We sent part to be plasma cut and oxy/act. cut along with mills and band saws.  I spend many days in there Jeffersonville, IN plant. 

The process is very flexible.  You can cut toilet paper with it.  Various media's are added to the water to make it more abrasive.  Garnet is use primarily.

[oldbike54]

 Ain't new tech great 

  Dusty

[Chuck in Indiana]

Ain't new tech great 

  Dusty

It's actually old tech, Dusty. Been around since the 90s I think..

[oldbike54]

It's actually old tech, Dusty. Been around since the 90s I think..

 Yeah , but newer than bakelite phones 

  Dusty

[Demar]

Ain't new tech great 

  Dusty

Right out of college I started working for Schlage Lock Co. in San Francisco in 1983. I programmed the Charmilles-Andrews wedm machines to cut the stamping die inserts. It was a FANUC programming station that produced a punched paper roll full of holes. I would then take it down to the guys on the floor and they would load it into the edm machines. I had a few hobby parts cut back then.

But yes, laser and water jet cutting are great tech.

[Chuck in Indiana]

My first programming classes were in Gotran and Fortran on a Univac.  16K, IIRC. Filled up a fair sized room.

[Zoom Zoom]

Yeah , but newer than bakelite phones 

  Dusty

Dusty, THAT was funny!

John Henry

[Triple Jim]

My first programming classes were in Gotran and Fortran on a Univac.  16K, IIRC. Filled up a fair sized room.

Fortran, punched on cards, run either on a Univac 1106 or 1108 for me.

[canuck750]

The last batch of rear brackets I made was using a hack saw, a drill and a file, it was very slow work and not very accurate!
By off chance I asked a steel shop I was in if they knew if water jet cutting was available locally and if it was fairly cheap, the guy behind the counter said, sure we do it here and there is no real minimum order but count on at least $150.00 a job with set up, turns out an order of $200 covers the set up and works out to the most economical small batch run; 75 items at $2.66 CDN or $2.00 USD.

[Chuck in Indiana]

Didn't know which Univac it was at the time, I was just a kid. Apparently it was a Univac II 
 

Tubes   5,200
Tube types   20
Crystal diodes   18,000
Magnetic cores   184,000
Transistors   1,200
Separate cabinets   4

[Triple Jim]

...there is no real minimum order but count on at least $150.00 a job with set up, turns out an order of $200 covers the set up and works out to the most economical small batch run; 75 items at $2.66 CDN or $2.00 USD.

It sounds like the laser shop I use is a little more suited to small orders.  They'll do $50 jobs without complaining.  Of course they might complain if all my jobs were $50 jobs.   

[V7Record]

Univac/Unisys 1100 & 2200 for me.  Worked for them 25+ years but eventually volunteered for a layoff.

[jabberwocky]

Looks very nice! So you're making a batch of them? Are you going to sell them yourself, or are you supplying them to a retailer?

[canuck750]

Looks very nice! So you're making a batch of them? Are you going to sell them yourself, or are you supplying them to a retailer?

I will be keeping two pair of front and back for myself, two other pair are spoken for. The rest are up for sale. Pm me if you are interested. I am going to ask $90 a pair for the front brackets and $35 a pair for the rear. The big cost is the chrome plating.

[keuka4884]

I was on a sub tender that serviced ballistic missile subs in the early 70's. I was in the weapons department so I had access (past a marine guard) to the area where the missiles were offloaded. There was a computer in the bottom level in a room about 12X12. They kept it really cold with high volume fans. In the center was a total analog computer. At least that's what I call it. All the switching going on was mechanical. A constant high noise din. They fed it boxes and boxes of IBM punch cards to reprogram a missile's warheads to new targets. At that time I was told that a warhead could hit a target 3000 miles away within 25 feet. I thought that was pretty impressive considering the technology they had at the time.

[tris]

My first programming classes were in Gotran and Fortran on a Univac.  16K, IIRC. Filled up a fair sized room.

Fortran - now there's a blast from the past

We did that at college and we had to send out punch card programmes up to the main site to run. You get the result back 2 days later and find that it had crashed on card 197 out of 204 and have to start again 

[Triple Jim]

...and find that it had crashed on card 197 out of 204 and have to start again 

Only if you put a print statement on cards 196 and 198.               Usually you really had little idea why you didn't get the results you wanted and had to start putting in test cards to narrow down the problem.

[charlie b]

It sounds like the laser shop I use is a little more suited to small orders.  They'll do $50 jobs without complaining.  Of course they might complain if all my jobs were $50 jobs.   

Many CNC/laser/etc shops will do small jobs, especially if you set up the files exactly like they want them and you use a material that they routinely stock.  Some may charge you for a full sheet/block of the material so talk to them first and see what is easiest for them.

It does depend on what their main use is.  A purely production shop probably won't touch small jobs, but, these days you can usually get a small job put in line.

We do a lot of custom work on our little laser (cuts wood, not metal). 

[charlie b]

Only if you put a print statement on cards 196 and 198.               Usually you really had little idea why you didn't get the results you wanted and had to start putting in test cards to narrow down the problem.

Yep, debug routines in your program.

[Orange Guzzi]

Application and secondary process is a determining factor when cutting a shape with water, plasma, laser or oxy/act.  The finished sides and the hardening of the cut edge will affect how two pieces will weld together or the tapping of a hole.  Since the water doe not use heat, the applications move outside of metal into the areas of material that will burn at a relative low temperature.  I helped build a machine that cut carbon fiber cloth used on the Stealth Fighter plane and cardboard tubes for toilet paper. 

A side story, when we were building the frames for the cutting head to move on the x,y,z axis, the weldment's would stress and twist. 
I sent the frames to a company that would stress relieve them by placing them in a large oven.  The frames would go out of our shop with on leg 1 inch off the floor and come back with another leg off the floor and the original on the floor.  Then when we would put the frame in the very large machining center, the cutting tools would relieve more stress causing more twisting.  This was huge problem.  I made some phone calls and a guy showed up with a his "special tool".  I was reluctant to believe his stress relieving tool would work. 
Off to the shop floor we went.  The tool consisted of an angle plate made of 1" plate with 12" square sides.  On one of the sides a D.C. drive variable speed motor was mounted.  In the black box of tricks was several steel disc with a mounting hold located at different distances off center.  The motor was connected to a control panel that would control the r.p.m.'s.  He mounted a random plate to the motor and two knock sensors several feet apart on the frame.  The control panel had a tachometer and two needle gauges connected to the knock sensors. He C-clamped the angle plate to the frame and started the motor.  The frame started vibrating at the frequency/rpm he set it at.  The two knock sensors had different readings on them.  He let the motor run until the two knock sensor had the same reading.  This would take several hours and lots of noise.  When the same reading was reached, he moved the angle plate to a new location and started the procedure over again.  After several cycle, the same reading was achieved no matter where the angel plate was mounted or the knock sensors were mounted.  The frames would twist  and change shape thru out the stress relieving process.  Doing the same thing as the heat process, causing one foot to raise and another to lower.  We still had problems with the machining process, but it was never as bad as the welding.

The vibration from the angle plate was very aggressive.  We had to place large dense rubber pads under the frames (weighting over 6,000 lbs) to keep them from destroying the concrete and walking across the shop floor.  The salesman said not to stand on or sit on the frames because it would cause bodily harm.

This tool had another use that was a real time save.  One of the components of water jet cutting is a water tank.  We fabricated the tanks out of 1/4 h.r.s   When the welders would get to a corner of the tank where the bottom and two sides come together, they would get air bubbles from the hall affect/magnetic field/polarity in the three sides.  This was a big problems because of the dye penetrant testing process was very messy and the air bubbles would move around the corner.  Lot of grinding and re welding.  This may sound like hocus-pocus, but he claimed that the vibration of the tank caused the magnetic field to neutralize allowing for the Mig welding process to work properly.  Which it did.  I was the hero for finding this process and reducing our labor.

This process always made me wonder how much stress is in a motorcycle frame.  It has to be wound up like a rubber band.  Which leads to the next question, if a motorcycle engine vibrates the frame, are these stresses relieved over time causing the bike to be twisted and the wheels out of align? 

I hope I explained this all right to you.  My Southern Indiana Dialect is hard for some to understand.

[bigtex]

It's actually old tech, Dusty. Been around since the 90s I think..

Older than that.  Used it to cut composite wing panels on the B2 bomber in 1984.

[Triple Jim]

Which leads to the next question, if a motorcycle engine vibrates the frame, are these stresses relieved over time causing the bike to be twisted and the wheels out of align? 

I would expect the stresses to be relieved only if the vibration caused the steel to reach its yield point, so probably not.  As one example, I crashed my H2 decades ago, and a few years ago I loosened the engine mounting bolts for some maintenance.  It was obvious that there were stresses from the crash that had not gone away after years of vibration.

[charlie b]

Older than that.  Used it to cut composite wing panels on the B2 bomber in 1984.

Electron beam welding was used in the early 70's.  EDM and waterjet was in the late 60's IIRC.

[twhitaker]

We're looking at it for cutting the fir tree root in gas turbine rotor discs for fitting the compressor blades 
Cheaper and much more available these days than good old broaching

Wire burning does have its limitations. We are preparing for shipment one 30 ton horizontal disc broach that has 3 rows of tooling 30 feet long. 5 axis CNC.