The Difference between Water Jet cutter and Traditional Cutting Machine

Nowadays, the water jet cutter has become more and more famous. We can receive a lot of consultation every day. However, many people are not very clear about what materials the water jet can cut. They often worry that they can't cut the materials they want to process after buying back the water jet. Let's introduce it to you. The range of water jet cutting should be very wide, which is jokingly called "cutting everything". You can see the power of water jet from just these four words. But in order to let you have a better and more clear understanding of the cutting range of water jet, here we select some typical materials to explain for you.

Water jet cutter is superior to other processing technologies, such as flame cutting, plasma processing, laser processing, EDM, turning milling and planing. At the same time, water cutting will not produce harmful gas or liquid, will not generate heat on the surface of the workpiece, it is truly multi-functional, high efficiency, cold cutting processing. For example, in metal cutting, various processing methods coexist, including cutting tools, laser, flame cutting (plasma cutting), EDM, wire cutting, water cutting and other processing methods. All kinds of cutting methods have their own advantages and limitations, and occupy a part of the market. But in many cutting methods, only water cutting belongs to cold cutting, which directly uses the kinetic energy of abrasive water jet.

Compared with water jet, the investment of laser cutting equipment is high, most of which are used for cutting thin steel plate and some non-metallic materials. The cutting speed is fast and the accuracy is high. However, when doing laser cutting, the arc mark and thermal effect will be caused at the cutting seam. In addition, the laser cutting of some materials is not ideal, such as aluminum, copper, and other non-ferrous metals and alloys, especially for the cutting of thicker metal plate, the cutting surface is not ideal, even not able to cut. The research of high power laser generator is trying to solve the problem of cutting thick steel plate, but the cost of equipment investment, maintenance and operation consumption is very high. Water cutting has many advantages: small investment, low operation cost, wide range of cutting materials, high efficiency, and convenient operation and maintenance. Plasma cutting has an obvious thermal effect and low precision, so it is not easy to reprocess the cutting surface. Water cutting belongs to cold cutting, which causes no thermal deformation and the cutting surface quality is good. Basically secondary processing is not needed, if necessary, it is easy to carry out secondary processing.

Compared with wire cutting, water cutting has higher precision in metal processing, but the speed is very slow. Sometimes other methods are needed to perforate and thread in order to perform the cutting. Moreover, the cutting size is greatly limited. Water cutting can drill and cut any material, and the cutting speed is fast and the processing size is selective.