My university department has made friends with a manufacturing technology (engineering) department on the same campus. Lately we’ve had several wood and other materials projects/parts either laser cut or high pressure water jet cut. The laser we’ve only used on plywoods and metal. It does an amazingly accurate job, and only leaves a little char on wood edges that is easily sanded off. The water jet has given us quite a few problems, but it has cut glass, metal, solid wood, plywood, and nearly everything else you could imagine throwing at it.
If anyone is interested, post here. I’ll try to answer any questions you might have about the technologies. I can’t tell you what the equipment costs, though. My students pay a reasonable fee based on length of cut, usually, for their pieces. The equipement was donated to the engineering department.
Dave B.
Replies
Lasers start at 12k or so. A bit more than I can afford.
Lasers are certainly exensive to own. But my students just pay the owner by the length of cut. In other words, don't buy a laser (or a water jet cutter). Rent one.
Dave B.
Dave,
What width kerf do they cut?
Kerf width on the laser is much smaller than with the water jet. I want to say .08" for the laser, but I'm not sure if that's right. I don't have the actual values with me, but I'll get them in a day or two and post them when I have them. We used the water jet on one project where we needed an elipse cut from the center of a rectangle but had to use both the inner ellipse and the outer rectangular parts in the final project. It was 1' thick hard maple. Seems like the kerf was about 1/32".
Dave B.
this is the first i've heard of using a water jet on wood- even something hard like maple. is this a common practice?
m
We don't worry if a process (cutting solid wood with a water jet) is common. We just try things and see how they turn out. I teach furniture design at a university, so we try and push the envelope whenever we can.
The water jet makes a clean entry cut, but will occasionally "blow back" and flare out the back side of a cut through solid wood OR plywoods. There is also the exposure to water and the general dirtiness of the water jet table to worry about. We're looking into solving the blowback and dirty-table problem by cutting simultaneously through solid wood and a sacrificial 1/4" plywood backer sheet. The backer would suffer all the damage, and leave a fairly clean (but slightly wet) solid wood part.
I still haven't found out what kerf width is with the water jet. Laser cut width is .008", but leave a black burnt edge in wood or plywood.
Dave B.
4D -A year ago I had extensive experience working with a waterjet machine cutting stone, steel, and wood - even MDF. Our experience was that the kerf would be narrower on the exit side of the cut than on the entry (top side). This was far more noticeable on dense material due to the fact that the denser the material the greater the tendency of the jet to be confined in the material. Rather opposite of what you'd expect but in cutting 1" think granite the edges were visually splayed outward to the back side of the piece.The greatest advantage of using this type of technology is being able to interface it with CAD. Practically anything is possible!...........
From Beautiful Skagit Co. Wa.
Dennis
you ever try using the laser to extract information out of anyone like Goldfinger did to James Bond?
Do not look into laser beam with remaining eye.
It would be nice to see some photos. I've seen some water cut stone and 1/8" stainless. What a beautifully finished edge. Ron
I'd also like to hear more about and see photos of the water jet - the tool, the results, the interesting stories!
Clay
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