Waterjet Technologies

A better way to cut material from paper to platinum

American Gasket  is pleased to announce our new Waterjet Cutting Service. Whether you need to cut metals, stone, glass, plastics, foam or other Industrial materials; trim or cut components to exacting tolerances, there is no better way than Waterjet Cutting.

Compared with Die cutting, Flame cutting, Lasers and other methods, Waterjet and Abrasive-Waterjet Cutting can be more cost effective, efficient and flexible, as well as Environmentally Safe. Waterjet cutting offers a World of Productive Solutions.

The process produces extremely smooth edges with no material degradation and allows consistently tight tolerances with materials ranging in thickness from wafer-thin up to 150mm (6 inches) or more. (Depending on material).

The advantages of waterjet cutting.

• No Heat Affected Zones, Hardening or Stress.
• No Tool Re-sharpening and Minimal Fixturing.
• Small cutting width.
• High cutting speeds with many materials
• Allows rapid prototyping.
• Flexible Production, Just in Time Manufacturing.
• Better Material Utilisation with CAD/CAM software.
• Eliminates many Secondary Finishing Operations.
• Extremely Accurate (Profiling tolerance; ± 0.2mm)

Machine specification / capabilities

Our DIGITAL MDI System is the latest technological development in Waterjet Cutting. With the flexibility of either Pure Waterjet, designed to cut soft flexible and semi-rigid materials (i.e. foam, rubber, plastics, gaskets etc) or Abrasive-Waterjet, allowing the cutting and processing of rigid materials (i.e. metals, ceramics, glass, stone, composites etc), our DIGITAL MIDI machine will cater for all your cutting requirements. Material and sheets up to 3m x 2m can be accommodated on the large cutting bed. The CAD/CAM software includes the latest AUTO CAD LT drawing package allowing us to convert compatible customer drawings and download them directly onto the system. Nesting software also allows maximum material utilisation with the minimum of scrap

 

Advantages to using a Waterjet:

 

 Two cutting methods - one principle

The pure-water cutting method

In this cutting method, which is used, inter alia, for textiles, elastomers, fiber materials, plastics, foodstuffs, paper, etc., the water is directed onto the material to be cut at a pressure of 4000 bar and a resultant exit velocity of approx. 800 to 1000/s through a diamond nozzle (with a diameter in the one-tenth of a millimeter range). The potential energy contained in the water is converted in the process to kinetic energy, i.e., into jet velocity, thus achieving its "cutting" effect.

Abrasive cutting method

In the case of materials on which the pure-water method reaches its limits, the abrasive method is used. In the abrasive process, a fine-particled cutting agent is added to the water. After addition of the abrasive, the water, air and abrasive are combined in the mixing chamber, collimated in the focusing nozzle and accelerated. The result of this technique is a high-energy jet which micro-erodes, i.e., drills and cuts, materials of great thicknesses and the most diverse consistencies, such as metals, ceramics, rock and bulletproof glass.


 

Pure water

Abrasive