Waterjet Group

gwf · Member

looking to speed up production

TFabian · Veteran Member

Try squeezing your mixing tube size down to .030. You will need to get a thinner ID abrasive feed tube to generate the appropriate amount of vacuum. If you take the section you have now, you need to cut it (or better yet, buy more) and leave the larger diameter coming out of the mini hopper and also going into the cutting head. Connect the two small sections with the same, but thinner, Tygon tubing, by press fitting the OD of the thinner tube into the ID's of the larger tube. I think the ID you are looking for with the smaller tube is .187, with the OD being .250". Keep the same abrasive Flow or maybe bump down one disk size. For this thickness material, you should cut a bit faster with a smoother edge. The downside is you are essentially packing more punch in a smaller diameter and your mixing tube may wear a bit quicker. Abrasive feed tends to be a bit more finicky, so you might have to tweak your delay settings a bit. HPA should work fine, but anything dustier than that (off brand), I would avoid. Go to HPX if you want a bit more speed.

Good luck!

Tim

gwf · Member

we changed the metering disc to a .206 and have picked up some good speed. flow has their chart for a orifice .014/mixing tube .04/metering disc .206 with .7 lb/min. i was going to turn the sand down to .7 lb/min but ive been swamped at work and have needed the speed. we are going through sand faster but its comparable with the speed. i still would like to drop to a smaller mixing tube but not having the time to experiment right now plus experimenting with $12 vs $200 pleases the boss better.

GlassCannon · Member

I know this is an old post but just figured I'd put this out there. I find that using a .013" orifice works the best pound for pound, it only eats .83gpm off the pump and has much better life than the .014's. The bigger the diamond the less life span and I have found them to be very unreliable failing anywhere between 2hrs-200hrs as opposed to the .013's where I always get over 400 hours. I use the .013 with typically a .035" nozzle and we too have switched to using 80hpa due to its much cheaper. The drawback I have found is the hpa slows your cutting speed by up to 20% vs the hpx but the cost covers the speed loss. We have 11 water jets and run most of them with up to 6 heads so the speed is made up there. My typical set up cutting up to 12" thick Ti is .013"-.036"-1.0lb/min 80hpa. We do lots of Ti and I get a good cut at .1ipm at 10" thickness. Abrasive rate is the most important factor, too much and you rob horsepower.

~~GC~~