Here we go boys. Desktop waterjet cutting. Only 4K

Looks fantastic but their estimate of capital to bring it into production is way understated.
 
Note the max thickness of 1/8" for stainless, and 3/16" for mild steel...... I guess the mild steel would include knifemaking steels in the annealed state? Still would be a neat fun piece of equip!
 
Pretty cool for what it is. For multiple material work, its very cool. For knifemaking, it appears slow, and cuts 3/16" maximum so there would be some limitations for this craft. The knife they show took 118 minutes to cut out.
 
ron_m80 said:
Pretty cool for what it is. For multiple material work, its very cool. For knifemaking, it appears slow, and cuts 3/16" maximum so there would be some limitations for this craft. The knife they show took 118 minutes to cut out.
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Now , that is not good at all ...... for 118min. I will cut 20 blank with my small Makita :thumbdn:
 
Natlek said:
Now , that is not good at all ...... for 118min. I will cut 20 blank with my small Makita :thumbdn:
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With pin holes and lightening cuts? And matching holes in your scales without clamping them together? While you simultaneously grind bevels on 2 other knives?

That's the appeal of a machine like this. Walk away time. Sure, you can probably do it faster the way you do it now. This can do it accurately, repeatedly, without manual intervention freeing you up to multi task.

I'm guessing the thickness limitations are what they will guarantee a straight kerf for. If it can cut .187" steel it can likely cut .250" steel, but outside of the current kerf straightness tolerance.

Think of how easy it would make fitting guards, or other square hole applications. This machine (if capable as stated) is almost as groundbreaking as a tabletop 3d metal printer, at this price point.
 
cut time and abrasive consumption seems very high--don't know if that's typical or what, and as mentioned the limitation on thickness would be a negative, but yes as mentioned a really cool piece of kit.
 
CUTTING: What is the maximum material thickness that WAZER can cut through?
This depends on what material you’re cutting. For steel, it’s around 3/16”
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I'm extremely skeptical
 
118 min to profile a blade?

A couple of Cubitron II 947a in 40 grit could turn out 12 in the same time
 
kuraki said:
With pin holes and lightening cuts? And matching holes in your scales without clamping them together? While you simultaneously grind bevels on 2 other knives?

That's the appeal of a machine like this. Walk away time. Sure, you can probably do it faster the way you do it now. This can do it accurately, repeatedly, without manual intervention freeing you up to multi task.

I'm guessing the thickness limitations are what they will guarantee a straight kerf for. If it can cut .187" steel it can likely cut .250" steel, but outside of the current kerf straightness tolerance.

Think of how easy it would make fitting guards, or other square hole applications. This machine (if capable as stated) is almost as groundbreaking as a tabletop 3d metal printer, at this price point.
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Come on, it's too slow , you know that . Two hours to cut one blank 3mm thick is to much ;)
 
Coming back from the pool and having a blank ready with no work sounds better than having to watch out for sparks, dust, exploding disks, overheating and work hardening using an angle grinder. :-p
 
On top of that 118 minutes of time, at .33 lb/min of abrasive at 40 cents/lb that's over $15 of abrasive per blade!!
 
Ken H> said:
On top of that 118 minutes of time, at .33 lb/min of abrasive at 40 cents/lb that's over $15 of abrasive per blade!!
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Good catch. So if one blank needs 118 minutes, and uses 37 pounds of Garnett, there will be 3 pounds (correction; just over two pounds) left in the hopper after one blank.

That puts a damper on repeatability....
 
The ither day I saw this and noticed on their site it said 118 minutes to cut the knife they have shown and thought "man I can do 10 blades on my grinder in that time".

Jay
 
If you can't reuse the garnet, it seems expensive, time consuming and wasteful. I think it would take a LONG time to break even with this as apposed to just having blanks cut in batches by someone else if that's what you want to do.
 
Where I would see some advantage is a person who wants to design his one-off blade and guard shapes and cut them himself, or small batches of unique items.

The CAD setup fees at most places are $75, plus as much as $10 each for small batches and single items There may be a minimum cutting fee of $200.

I recently had a well known waterjet cutter quote me $275 to cut me twenty custom bottle openers from my own titanium sheet - about 300 inches of cutting. If I had one of these and could do it for $100 in material I would consider it a bargain. The $275 plus the titanium would make the total around $350, which is $17.50 a bottle opener. Not really cost effective. I may end up doing it, but an alternative to do it in shop would be nice.

I may watch these and see how they get the bugs out and how they hold up after a year or two of use.


BTW, what I took from the charts and the knife shown was that there was 118 minutes total cutting time to make all the knife parts ... not just cut the blade. That would be blade, scales with fitted bolsters, and precisely placed holes with stepped seats in the scales. You might have nearly that much time involved doing it by hand.
 
As someone that actually has hands on experience running a waterjet, I am very skeptical. the Flow 10 feet outside my office has a pump that runs up to 60,000 psi. I don't see how that itty bitty little pump would be effective. You can reuse the media but it is not recommended. If the garnet gets wet you'll have a bunch of feeding and clogging issues. Cool idea but it looks to need a bigger pump. an hour to cut that aluminum sprocket would take about 10 mins on my flow.
 
I completely agree, but what is the cost of your unit, as well as operation/maintenance cost?

As a commercial unit that runs all day, this desk-top machine would be a joke. But as a one-off unit for a hobby smith, ten times the cut time for a tiny fraction of the initial cost and operational cost ( not to mention the ability to fit in a small shop) isn't a bad tradeoff - as long as the end product is an acceptable blank.

I want to read more and check some real world reviews after they get the first few mods done. In the beginning most devices have problems that need to be addressed.




Has anyone got a link to the internet post about the "Red Neck" waterjet cutter that was made from a big gas engine powered power washer and some jury rigged parts to feed the grit. IIRC, he used sandblasting media for the abrasive. I saw it a few years ago, but the old link went dead.
 
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