Individual part cost is always an important consideration in a project but total cost should be looked at closely when deciding how to have your parts manufactured. Lower quality parts may cost less upfront but can cause problems in assembly and other downstream operations causing unnecessary assembly delays and headaches leading to increased cost. Our waterjet cut part are always impressive from a quality and accuracy standpoint and can eliminate those potential problems.

Below is information that may help you in designing parts for both function and cost. Check back soon as more concepts will be added soon.

Table Capacity & Limitations
Our water jet machine has a large 8’ x 13’ cutting envelope accepting multiple large sheets of material. Longer non-traditional bar or structural parts can be cut by indexing the material through the machine using fixtures and allowing the part to hang past the cutting envelope. We have cut features in flat bar, angle iron, channel, tubing, and other long parts using this method with high accuracy. The picture below shows industrial parts being cut from ½” x 5” x 100” long A36 flat bar two at a time with one index. View Example.

Tabbing or Bridging
Small parts can be tabbed retaining them from moving or falling into the tank during cutting. The tabs or bridges can be as thin as .010” wide and located where it makes most sense on the given part. The parts are then easily broken apart from the parent material after the cutting cycle is complete. In this example the part will be welded to another part along the edge with the tab. Very little clean up after the part is broke free needed to be done in this case. View Example.

Artistic, architectural, or signage applications
Waterjets are used everyday to make detail cuts or tight fitting metal inlays for floor medallions, custom countertops shapes, large or small outdoor signs from stainless steel, all designed by architects and artist.

Cutting your company Logo in metal or another material – This can be a great way to make a wall sign for your office using your logo. The one major thing to consider is that the logo will need to be enlarged while retaining its resolution and level of detail. The file type you will need is a EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) as they can be almost infinitely scaled in size without and loss of resolution. Most photo editing programs can convert a file to an EPS type. View Example.

Materials:
All metals, plastics, wood, composites, laminates, tile, marble, and granite can be cut with a waterjet. Advantages of superior finish, no hardening of the metal, no warping or distortion, small kerf width, and ability to cut brittle material such as glass and stone without chipping are things to consider while deciding on the material and method for your project.

Common Line Cutting:
Common line cutting is allowing the parts to share edges while cutting. With one cut we are cutting two parts. This technique can reduce cutting time by more then 50% while producing very accurate and repeatable parts. All parts don’t lend themselves to this technique but it is something to consider during the design process.

Common line cutting can save you money thru better material yield and reduced cutting time. Two cutting heads running common line cutting can be very cost effective. View Example.

Tongue & Slot Design Technique:
Waterjet can greatly simplify how your designs come to life. With high precision a designer and place tabs and slots on adjacent parts in the CAD system. By drawing these features to actual size with the desired clearance assembly becomes a snap.

Using this technique parts literally position themselves, square themselves and snap together and are ready to be fastened with many techniques.

Benefits to using Waterjet cutting and this technique for your assemblies:

• Reduced assembly time and labor
• Eliminate need for costly jigs and fixtures
• Reduce secondary machining operations to tapping or reaming
• Inherently assemblies will have greater rigidity
• Ensure high quality and repeatability
• Reduce need for higher skilled labor

Standard Material Sizes:
Consider designing parts that will nest in standard sheet width and length multiples as this can save huge $ in material cost. Especially important in aluminum, stainless, copper and heavy steel plate.

Marking:
The machine can mark parts during cutting with text, lines, shapes or whatever. Some ideas for marking are listed below.

• Bend lines --- BEND HERE ---
• Weld locations
• Center marks that look identical to center punches
• Part fits and alignment
• Part #
• Company Names etc.
• Let your imagination run.

Rounded vs. Square Corners
When designing interior or exterior features in parts that will be waterjet cut it is possible to lower cut cost by using rounded corners vs. square corners. The benefit here is the controller does not have to decelerate to a stop then re-accelerate at a square corner. Complex mathematical algorithms calculate the speed of the jet up to 100 times per inch to achieve the desire quality whether it is a straight line, curve, or corner. If the radius is large enough the controller will not even slow down while maintaining the same cut quality as a straight line cut. Obvious other benefits to rounded corners are fewer sharp corners and reducing potential stress points in your parts.