Water-jet with a filter press

Hello!!!

We just bought an Omax water0jet machine and we love it. Runs good and the support from the company for the issues we've had since installation has been outstanding.

We got the solids removal system with the machine and it works pretty good except we somehow have to get the used media out of the hopper. Wet heavy garnet is not the easiest to lift out of a hopper. We happen to have an 'extra' Oberlin filter press not doing anything so we decided to hook it up to the water jet machine. By hook it up I mean we put the intake hose on one side of the table and the return on the other side of the table. The results have been far greater than expected. the water is definitely less murky than it was and we are gathering up the mostly dry garnet in a hopper that can be easily taken out with a fork lift and no wet garnet mess.

Has anyone else tried this? I'm definitely interested in feedback and feel free to ask questions about it. I think we are going to try and take this a little further and see if we can make this a longer term solution for garnet removal.

The only downside to this approach will be that the filter pressure pump will require either repair or replacement at a more frequent interval than is considered normal.

The garnet is very abrasive and will take out the seal, impeller, and volute if it is a centrifugal pump. If your filter uses the double diaphragm, then the pump housing and piping will be what wears.

Not a bad approach, just does have a maintenance downside.

So we went with a diaphragm pump for that very same reason. If we do decide to keep this longer term we are going to replace some the parts with a more abrasive resistant material like delren or something like that. We are still very much in the experimental phase but early results look pretty promising....so far

We use filter bags with lifting straps. Forklift through the straps, entire filter bag of garnet is lifted out of the filtration system and placed into waste tote.

You want hard but not too hard rubber components to resist abrasion, keep pumps speeds low and rubber coated bits hold up well to garnet type abrasion its why rubber linings are common in the off shore dredging world. right grades can perform nearly as well as wear plate in some applications. Try the hard polyurethanes for starters.

Other option is to not use a mechanical pump but more of a venturi type suction setup, use the filtered water for the pump feed so your not pumping grit will go a long way.

Do you have the standard solids removal type system? We were looking in to getting bags like that but didn't know how well they filtered. When you lift it out of the hopper is there still a lot of water that has to come out?

TurboGuy said:

Do you have the standard solids removal type system? We were looking in to getting bags like that but didn't know how well they filtered. When you lift it out of the hopper is there still a lot of water that has to come out?

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I can see... I don't actually work on the floor, I've just watched them change it out in the past. There is definitely still a lot of water in the garnet when the bag is lifted out. I suspect it's the standard filtration unit (it's a big hopper that sits off to the side of the tank). For us, the garnet has to be handled as special waste anyways so they provide large waste totes for us to place it in.

What are you guys cutting if it's "special waste"? I think we are going to be in the special category as well. We're cutting Inconel 718. We're getting some tests done to see what the numbers are and what we have to do for disposal.

IIRC here in the UK its the heavy metal content of the waste that categorises it. Were i was at was looking at water jet, but the disposal headache was a lot less with oxy fuel - plasma as the slag could simply go in the metal skip all be it at a reduced tonnage rate than other scraps. Compared to the tons of spent contaminated garnet.

yeah same here. We have a few sample out to try and determine the metal content of the spent Garnet. We have a cracker-jack waste management team and I believe if the content is low enough we have some people that will buy the spent garnet. If the content is too high I believe those same people will take the spent Garnet for free.

We're making aerospace parts so having the ability to rough out large chunks of material fairly quickly with no heat affected zone makes the water-jet really appealing.

TurboGuy said:

We're making aerospace parts so having the ability to rough out large chunks of material fairly quickly with no heat affected zone makes the water-jet really appealing.

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Same here... we occasionally use beryllium copper; once the tank is contaminated with that, you would have to do a full clean-out to get it all out. Too much hassle, so we just treat it all as special waste.