Water Jet Cutting Tool

Published on 20 May 2022. Written by Ronak Giri

Water jet cutting method is one of the material removal type of rapid prototyping technique (RPT) which is been widely used in the automotive and aerospace industry to produce the complex and precise shape on a metal with minimum time and least effort being used.

The popularity of this technique in automobile and aerospace manufacturing industries is because of the cost efficient work and the precision is as near to laser cutting technique. Also, the water jet technique the tool required less maintenance compare to other techniques which do the same work. Water jet also have an advantage over other techniques as in this method the cutting tool is water hence the cost efficiency of this method is relatively higher compare to other RPT.

Also the water cutting technique is better for the material with low melting point hence if we go for laser cutting for such material it will melt the upper surface of the material and that won’t give the fine precision of cut. This will be required in case of laser cutting machine, the water will be sprayed at high velocity and increasing the temperature of water helps to cut the material with low melting point and with a proper precise cut.

Project Description:

As we already explained a water jet cutting technique is a material removal type of a RPT. The principle behind the working of this technique is simple as the water jet with very high velocity will be focused and pointed to the surface of material to be removed the water molecules strikes the molecules or material particle at the surface with sufficient amount of force to remove that particle from its position. And this gives a proper cut of depth required which helps to get the complex shapes to manufacture rapidly with this technique.

To increase the velocity of flow of water an external pump is fitted along with the water tank which applies pressure of about 45000-50000 psi on water also this flowing water from tank by supplying pipe to a convergent nozzle where the velocity of the water will increased further.

Nozzle works on the principle of the continuity equation which says if the area of mass flow reduces the velocity is proportionally increases hence a nozzle is a convergent section where the cross section area reduces to increase the velocity of flow and form a water jet with required amount of force.

Nozzle: A convergent cross section which increases the velocity of the water jet required to remove the material from the surface.
Electrical Pump: It’s an electrical device which sucks the air from atmosphere and increases the pressure.
Stepper motor: It’s a kind of discontinuous controllable motor which can rotate in both the side depends on the input signal.
Arduino UNO board: It's an embedded board with a microcontroller which can be programmed according to usage.
Valve: It’s a mechanical component to control the water flow from the tank to the nozzle.
Pipe supply unit: It’s a long thin pipe to supply the pressurized water from the tank to the nozzle.

Project Implementation:

In this project we will be building a machine which can do the water jet cutting in which we will be using an electrical pump to generate the required pressure to drive the water with required velocity. The pump will be connect to the water reservoir to generate pressure inside the water containing tank.

The tank will be fitted with the supply pipe by which water will be drive from the tank to the nozzle at nozzle we have a valve which control the jet flow from the nozzle and we can select the flow according to the material to be cut.

Controlling the nozzle to get the complex shape is very important and doing it manually is almost impossible hence we use a set of a stepper motor for each of the axis to travel the nozzle head in all three axis based on the design.

To control the motor rotation a controller is required hence we will be using a Arduino UNO board that will be programmed to send the output signal for the motor to rotate according to the CAD design.

Project Requirement:

Nozzle
Electrical Pump
Pipe supply unit
Stepper motor
Arduino UNO board
Valves

Kit required to develop Water Jet Cutting Tool:

Technologies you will learn by working on Water Jet Cutting Tool:

Water Jet Cutting Tool

Project Description:

Project Implementation:

Project Requirement:

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