What is a Solar Waterjet? First you need to understand what a normal waterjet is.

Abrasive jets have been used in industry since 1982. The precursor to abrasive jets, Waterjets, have been in use since 1970. Abrasive jets are used by industries such as the automobile, aerospace, and glass industries, to create precision parts from hard-to-cut materials. An abrasive jet pressurizes water up to 55,000 pounds per square inch (psi) [379,000 kiloPascals (kPa)] and then forces it through a small diamond orifice at 2500 feet (762 meters) per second, or about two and half times the speed of sound.

Garnet (an abundant, environmental friendly gemstone) abrasive is then pulled into this high-speed stream of water, and mixed with the water in a long tungsten carbide mixing tube. A stream of abrasive-laden water moving at 1000 feet per second (305 meters/sec) exits the tungsten carbide tube. This jet of water and abrasive is then directed at the material to be machined. The jet drags the abrasive through the material in a curved path and the resulting centrifugal forces press the particles against the work piece. The abrasivejet's cutting action is a grinding process, but rather than using a solid grinding wheel, the forces and motions of the cutting action are provided by water.

So, what is different with a Solar Waterjet?

We have harnessed the power generated by the sun with solar panels, and we use that power to operate our OMAX 55100 Waterjet Machining Center.

Due to the design of the Waterjet machining center we are capable of processing almost any material into the shapes our customer’s desire. The process does not add heat to the material, so it does not get tempered like with laser cutting. This is especially desirable for projects that require a secondary process like tapping or CNC machining. Our OMAX Waterjet Machining Center can process material up to 55” wide by 100” long and up to 8 inches thick. With the Waterjet we are not limited to only cutting metals, we can process plastics, glass, wood, stone, ceramic and many other materials. Contact us for more information.

The sun is abundant here in the desert and it produces a lot of energy

We convert that solar energy…

…into water power…

Water-Jet-Graphic-Splash2

…enough to cut through steel

Top 10 reasons

to choose abrasivejets

  1. 1. Wide range of materials
    • The OMAX® JetMachining® Center can work with a wide variety of materials, ranging from metals to ceramics, composites, glass—even marble and granite.
  2. 2. Quality finish
    • The finish provided by the OMAX JetMachining Center is a smooth, sandblasted finish. No rough edges, burrs or jagged ends.
  3. 3. No heat in machining process
    • Because the abrasivejet uses water and abrasive, the material is not heated up significantly during the cutting process. This makes the OMAX JetMachining Center ideal for materials that are affected or deformed by heat, such as titanium.
  4. 4. Environmentally friendly
    • The OMAX JetMachining Center uses water and garnet to cut. Garnet is an inert gemstone, which can be disposed of in the municipal waste stream. No toxic fumes are produced during machining.
  5. 5. No tool changing
    • You don’t need to change cutting tools with the OMAX JetMachining Center. One nozzle is used to machine all the different types of materials and shapes, saving time and the expense of multiple cutting tools.
  6. 6. Minimal burr
    • Using the abrasivejet, there is little or no burr in most materials.
  1. 7. Quick to program
    • The OMAX JetMachining Center comes complete with a comprehensive CAD progrtam (called Layout). You can draw parts from scratch in Layout, or import standard DXF files created in other programs. You can even trace over a photograph or bitmap image. In addition, OMAX machines are supported by a wide variety of third party software products such as CAD/CAM, Nesting, and scanning.
  2. 8. Fast set-up and programming
    • Make is the other main program provided as part of the OMAX JetMachining Center. Make takes the tool path created by Layout and calculates the exact position and cutting speed of the nozzle at a resolution of over 2,000 points per inch (800 points/cm). All you do is specify the material and thickness and Make does the rest.
  3. 9. Complement existing tools, used for either primary or secondary operations
    • The OMAX JetMachining Center can also work with your other machine tools to take advantage of the unique capabilities of each. An example of this is roughing out nested parts on the OMAX to maximize material usage, and then performing final machining on a mill or machining center.
  4. 10. Reduce setup times
    • Little or no side force on the material being machined reduces the need to complex fixtures and greatly speeds setup times.