On Aug 28, 10:33*am, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"Jon Elson" wrote in message

...

Bob La Londe wrote:
Anybody here play with this kind of cutter? *What kind of water pressures
does it take? *How is the nozzle shaped internally? *What kind of
thickness can you cut? *What kind of volume of water does it move?

Typical units use about 40,000 to 50,000 PSI, and maybe half a
gallon/minute. *The water is loaded with garnet grit to do the actual
cutting. *I watched a demo of cutting 1/2" diameter holes through a 4"
block of Inconel, which was really quite impressive. *It took maybe 2
minutes for each hole.

Jon

Today's commercial WJCs use garnet, but it's interesting to note that the
early experiments, and some of the early commercial units, could do some
amazing cutting with water alone. In fact, I remember one company that I
reported on that sold the same model to a company that was slicing Sarah Lee
chocolate cakes and, in the building next door, to one that cut
cement-reinforced slag-fiber ("rock wool") insulation panels.

You can cut steel with plain water, but it's very slow. I haven't kept up
but I think that all of the commercial units designed for cutting metal now
use abrasive grit. Still, the ability to cut with plain water is a read
head-shaker, IMO.

--
Ed Huntress

Several years ago I was doing some research for investment purposes
into a company that was using high pressure LIQUID Nitrogen for jet
cutting. Electronic circuit boards and meat cutting were some of the
uses they were investigating at that time. I filled up my flash drive
where I was storing all that information and put it away. I probably
should dig through it again and see what kind of progress they have
made.

I think it was the University of Nevada Las Vegas that was leading the
research into this along with one of the Idaho Universities. The Idaho
team was experimenting with it for cutting metals IIRC.

I can think of some interesting possibilites.
DL