Waterjet cutting technology

The waterjet technology offers its users several important advantages compared to traditional machining methods and other nontraditional machining techniques as well (laser cutting, plasma cutting, and ultrasonic machining), for example, 

These advantages caused the rapid spread of the waterjet technology application fields in the aircraft industry, automotive, military, medicine, job shops, and many others. The revenues of the waterjet cutting market worldwide are expected to reach 911 million in 2012 with a compound annual growth rate of approximately 12% [13]. 

On the orifice, the potential energy of compressed water (today up to 6000 bar) is transformed into high kinetic energy of the waterjet. Its velocity can be estimated according to Bernoulli s law  

forexample,forthe waterpressurep = 4000bar, the velocity = 805-875 m/s is achieved. With such high-energy plain waterjet, soft materials can be cut. Typical applications are seals, foam, rubber, car interior equipment, wood, plastic, paper products, or frozen food products. 

Manufactured abrasives (mostly secondary raw materials or industrial wastes) such as alkaline glass and slag (glassy form of slag, coal slag, Cu slag, and Fe slag) have also been tested [40]. 

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This chapter will give general information about hydroforming and isostatic pressing and more detailed information about autofrettage process (Section 11.1) and waterjet cutting technology (Section 11.2). 

Hoogstrate, A.M. (2000) Towards high-definition abrasive waterjet cutting. Ph.D. thesis, Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. 

The quantitative evaluation of the technological quality of the cutting kerf machined with a high-pressure abrasive waterjet could be made on the basis of guideline VDI 2906 [43]. The evaluation indicators provided in the guideline are defined in Figure 11.9b. 

However, in medical applications the waterjet technology is actually limited to soft tissue cutting - the plain waterjet has not enough cutting performance to be applied... 

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