Waterjet Group

OPTION WATERBOY · Member

ANY ADVISE IS WELCOME

oferiniowa · Member

I've cut holds in 3/8" square tube in one wall only. I just set up with the tube wall thickness and go. It puts a mark on the inside surface of the opposite wall but does not go through. I've made holes as small as 3/8" diameter and large enough to catch the radius of the tube. It is very loud and you'll have water coming out the end of the tube, but it works very well.

We run 60,000 PSI with HBA100 abrasive 0.7 lbs/min on a FlowJet. You may want to play with your pierce time and dwell time at the end of the cut, or make your lead in and out lengths to prevent the stream from being in the same area too much.

OPTION WATERBOY · Member

Thank you for your reply,

I run 60,000 PSI with 80 HPA abrasive 1.0 lbs/min on a FlowJet.

Hell Yeah it's loud! Double hearing protection for me ! Amazing how the shop clears out when I do these jobs, and thank God I have labourers to clean up the mess afterwards.

I have cut holes in square tubing tubing and Large Diameter pipe before but I have always had to put scrap metal inside to deflect the stream, especially during the peirce. ( I've had holes blown right through to the otherside on 10" dia x 1" wall thickess pipe before). I am going to try your suggestion on a test pce. This is a very large job to do, as I have four of these parts. The set up involved is not someting I would like to do all the time. I figure this job will isolate the machine for atleast a week.

Maxxheadroom · Newbie

I have cut many many tubes, I find the best way the same as you is to armor the bottom of the tube with scrap material. We consider this when quoting jobs. The other thing I do when cutting tube is I tack a plate on either side of the tube with a small hole cut on either end. While there is still some spray that comes out of the holes it greatly reduces the mess otherwise made, and greatly reduces the amount of noise.

TFabian · Veteran Member

The other thing to do is minimize your delay values and avoid stationary pauses. This will minimize the divots left on the opposite side.

OPTION WATERBOY · Member

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GlassCannon · Member

Sorry for such a late reply but I am a fairly new user, some of this may help for future work though.

We do quite a few jobs that require cutting of tube, pipe and so on. We use carbide blocks/funnels to block the stream. It holds up much longer than sacrificial steel or other materials and can be made into any desired (reasonable) shape. We typically use an indexing rod to attach the carbide and for positioning under the jet on tubing, arm attachments for our 5-axis work and a "bucket" full of spent nozzles/scrap etc for other large open air type cutting that we can wheel around under the part to follow the stream.

~GC