Waterjet
Waterjet cutting is an abrasive cutting process that uses high pressure water to cut virtually any material with a high level of precision and no distortion. The water is pressurized and pushed through a .030″ diameter nozzle, concentrating the water stream and allowing us to cut any material, from steel to plastic, up to 6″ thick.
Waterjet cutting services has several advantages for our customers. First, they eliminate the need to buy custom tooling, thereby reducing set up time and unnecessary costs. We use the same set up to cut thin sheet metal as we do to cut 6″ plate. Second, waterjets are capable of cutting a wide variety of materials. We regularly cut Steel, Stainless Steel, Aluminum, high temp and aerospace alloys like Titanium, Inconel, Waspaloy, Hastelloy, reflective metals like Brass and Copper, Plastics, Composites and they are especially good at cutting laminated materials like Carbon Fiber.
Waterjet also has a very significant advantage over Laser cutting and Plasma cutting. Water jet cutting is a cold process and does not put any heat into the material during the cutting process. This means that no heat affected zone is created during the cutting process. This is a very important fact to those in the Aerospace industry as the waterjet cutting process to does not alter the physical state of the material being cut or cause the material to warp from the heat.
The lack of a heat affected zone helps us as sheet metal fabricators as well. The elimination of a heat affected zone means we can go straight from the waterjet to threading or welding operations without the need to remove any heat affected material. This reduces labor and help CAMM Metals deliver a quality product with speed and efficiency.
We use waterjets in several different ways. First, we use them to cut all of our flat sheet metal and plate to feed the fabrication work we do. The precision from the waterjet is just as good as laser cutting and better than plasma cutting. Second, we use these machines to process thick plates and pre cut shapes and blanks for our CNC Machining centers. Third, we offer water jet cutting as a service to customers who do not have this capability. We can use our material or you can drop ship us your material and generally within 3 days your parts will be cut and ready to go. Lastly, we can cut round and rectangular tubes and pipes. Click on the YouTube icon at the top of this page you’ll see a video of us cutting a 8″ diameter stainless steel pipe.