We are starting to see a high number of orifice failures on our Flow Mach 2. We use the water jet for our R & D shop, not production so we don't get a lot of hours on the machine, only about 500 a year. We've had a couple orifice discs fail in a very short time with very similar failures. We use Ruby orifices and the jet of water coming through the back side of the orifice cuts a grove into the orifice body. It also causes the cut quality to drop rapidly. The last disc only lasted 9 hours, the previous disc was replaced after 40 but was showing signs of damage many hours before that. I know ruby orifices aren't guaranteed to last but this seems fishy. anyone else have a similar issue? Could there be something up stream of the orifice that could cause this?
Matt Simpson said
Jun 28, 2013
How is your water quality? Are you guys replacing you inlet filters more frequently than usual? Also if you have a microscope in you shop (we recommend at least a 50X) try to inspect the orifice hole and see if there are any mineral deposits forming on the edges of the center hole. USB micoscopes are pretty cheap now and you can find them Amazon or other web sites. What type of cutting head do you have? Another issue could be over tightening of the cutting head components which could cause a fracture of the gem thus resulting in a bad jet.
oferiniowa said
Jul 9, 2013
Thanks for the reply. I've been on vacation or I'd replied earlier. The water quality sees to be very good. We have not had to replace filters very often at all. I have not looked at the orifice with a microscope but I have been looking for one. The over tightening might be my issue. We have several people running the machine and some think they have to be gorillas when they assembly the head.
We are starting to see a high number of orifice failures on our Flow Mach 2. We use the water jet for our R & D shop, not production so we don't get a lot of hours on the machine, only about 500 a year. We've had a couple orifice discs fail in a very short time with very similar failures. We use Ruby orifices and the jet of water coming through the back side of the orifice cuts a grove into the orifice body. It also causes the cut quality to drop rapidly. The last disc only lasted 9 hours, the previous disc was replaced after 40 but was showing signs of damage many hours before that. I know ruby orifices aren't guaranteed to last but this seems fishy. anyone else have a similar issue? Could there be something up stream of the orifice that could cause this?