The general trend of robotic waterjet cutting

Why do manufacturers consider cutting 3D parts with water jet? The reason involves many factors, three of which are applicable to any abrasive water jetapplication, whether on the cutting table or on the robot.

First, the water jet cutter can reduce or eliminate the need for secondary machining or grinding operations. Secondly, the workpiece material may be sensitive to the heat affected zone generated by thermal cutting. Third, other cutting methods (such as sawing) may damage the integrity of the material, which is impractical or does not meet the application requirements.

The materials involved in some applications are so sensitive that the friction of the planer will generate too much heat. Of course, abrasive water jet cutting does generate heat due to friction, but it is far from the heat generated by other cutting processes.

Consider aluminum control arms for vehicles. It is not flat and is a safety critical project, which must be tested regularly during the production process. This involves cutting the test specimen from the arm. Obviously, this cannot be reduced by heat treatment, because heat treatment will produce heat affected zone, affect material integrity, and make material test invalid. In this case, the most cost-effective mechanical cutting method may be robotic water cutting.

Robot water jet cutting can reduce operation time and fixture design, so it is suitable for application in mass production environment. But this does not mean that robot water cutting can not handle a variety of parts. Once the system is designed, the fixture is made and the program is written, the robot can switch from one part to another with few stops. Just turn off the lights, call up the program and make small adjustments if necessary.

But the initial design, tooling and programming may take some time. For parts without complex cutting paths and high precision requirements, time may not be important. However, for extremely complex work, the preparation time may increase.

All of this must be weighed against other factors, including system costs. As robots become cheaper and cheaper, robot water jet cutting 3-D components has become a cost-effective way. When cutting a large number of complex parts, the programming time may be long, but once the programming is completed, the system will continue to repeat the cutting thereafter. Combined with the competitive price of robots and the fact that multiple robot arms can be set to cut at the same time to improve productivity, robotic water cutting is becoming more and more commercially valuable.