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OMAX -PROTOMAX Personal Waterjet

The ProtoMAX is pretty cool - it's a real abrasive waterjet, operating at 30,000 psi, which makes a good, efficient cut in plastics, glass, stone and most other non-metal candidates for waterjet cutting. I've spent enough time operating a different OMAX in the the same pressure ranges cutting plastics, art glass, tile, foam to believe it's a good deal for someone who wants to cut metals up to ~1/4", and non-metals, and whose needs are met by the 12x12" work envelope. Would sure appeal to more folks with a larger envelope.

We mostly cut metal, but for non-metals instead of piercing low and cutting high, I like to both pierce and cut at a mid-range pressure of 25 to 30K, for good cut performance with most of the damage-reducing benefit of the low pressure pierce, and avoiding the rather severe UHP plumbing fatigue that comes from piercing at a lower pressure.

Cutting metals at 30,000 psi, there's more taper and drift vs. cutting at 50,000 psi or higher, and the cut performance and in particular the abrasive usage is exponentially less efficient, but 30,000 psi is perfectly capable of making good sheet metal parts with reasonable abrasive cost in absolute terms.

Unlike for example the Wazer, with a lower operating pressure that is so inefficient cutting metal, it would cost more in abrasive alone than to just pay a waterjet shop to make a typical metal part. At least that's what I inferred from their web site some time ago.
 
This is a clever machine at a great price point for a serious manufacturer. It's a comparable price to some of the better non-metal laser cutters in the 18"x24" range and I think also some better CNC routers. The 12"x12" size is good as there are lots of parts for automated machinery in that size scale for example and it's exactly the larger pieces that you'd be more likely to outsource anyway. It will be interesting to see how this does.
 
I looked into the Wazer waterjet, which is of a similar size, and the cost of the garnet cutting material through me off the idea, once I looked at cutting rate, garnet consumption, and garnet price. The cutting media is one use from what I could tell.
 
I bought one of these a couple of months back, I was kind of forced into it as the cut quality of some glass parts I have been buying for 20+ years has gotten very poor, an operator problem in my opinion. I tried a few other suppliers and gave up, bought a Protomax.

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I think the quality of this little machine is very high, it is all made of first rate components. There are however as with any piece of equipment some features I find odd and or incomplete. For instance, when I was unpacking and assembling it I discovered it doesn't come with any instructions, you have to hunt for them online. I found the instructions hard to find and not necessarily in an order conducive to getting started. A real odd thing to me is the fact that it has real nice casters on it but if you move it the high pressure pump is dragged about by the power cord and high pressure line. I am having a real problem wrapping my head around the programming of it as there doesn't seem to be any relationship between machine zero and where your part will be. You are supposed to move the cutting nozzle to some arbitrary place where the machine can cut the part which is OK I guess if you are cutting the whole part inside and out. If you want to cut something on an existing part is where the problems begin. I will need to spend more time on the phone with them to find a cure for this, I would like to just program from machine zero for this type of part. Here are a couple of parts I made just for fun.

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Their staff at Protomax seem to try to be very helpful and I am having trouble explaining my wishes but I think we will get there. As for the glass parts I bought the machine for it is producing parts 15 times better than the ones I bought in the last several years and it is very easy to d
 
Every time you power it up you have to rehome, however that seems to have nothing to do with where the part will be located. If you tell it to cut when it is home ti will tell you the cut is out of the range of travel and to move the nozzle to a more suitable location to start. Hunt and guess where it can start. It makes it difficult to do additional machining to an existing part.
 
They seem very surprised that I would want to have it cut in a specific place, they say they are looking into it. Evedently they intended for parts to be completed, inside and out, never thinking someone might want to cut something in an existing part. We will see what they come back with, they seem to be quite helpful and this is new for them, I think I have machine #35.
The other odd thing is that it has 5 cut qualities (feed rates) but only 1, 2,and 3 are differant 4 and 5 are the same as 3.
 
They seem very surprised that I would want to have it cut in a specific place, they say they are looking into it. Evedently they intended for parts to be completed, inside and out, never thinking someone might want to cut something in an existing part. We will see what they come back with, they seem to be quite helpful and this is new for them, I think I have machine #35.
The other odd thing is that it has 5 cut qualities (feed rates) but only 1, 2,and 3 are differant 4 and 5 are the same as 3.

Throw a pice of material in the machine, cut the contoure of the part you wish to recut. Now place the part you wish to recut in the cutout contour. Voila, its located in a specific known location.
 
That kind of how I thought it would work, however it started the cut you just spoke of in some arbitrary point having nothing to do with the profile it just cut or machine zero. It will make that profile cut but I cannot find anyway to locate the new cut on the actual part. It makes up it's own cut path and you are just stuck with it other than the length and angle of entry points.
 
^ Sounds like control retrofit time then, because theres plenty of options that will let you keep track of just were you are, that is a pretty dang standard requiremnt on a cnc cutter of any size - price point.

I was seriously looking at a XYZ 2OP, yeah thats a vmc like machine, but with 8 tool changing but was small, plenty accurate enough for my needs and a size that i could shoe horn in and actually afford. The control convinced me in 30 seconds i would be retrofitting it before i even used it, it did not automatically store the tool ofsets among other quirks on power down!!!!!! The sales man's comments but you can just rest them each day kinda got the look reserved for when some one says something really stupid.

Realy don't get why these kinda machines are being made at last and offering such good results but failing on the basics of the controls, when cnc controlls covering all the damn needs are so common and cheap to implement.
 
I am supposed to have a call from one of their software engineers Monday morning. I understand that only a few of these have been made and it does work perfectly for the job I bought it to do. As long as they are working to simplify my issues I cannot say anything but good about them. As I said before it seems to be really well built and I have to assume they will fix these few quirks.
 
I spoke with the engineer today, he has never run any machine other than this one.
He suggested some work arounds but no way to acccuratly locate the machines cut to machine zero.
 
I do not know this, there are no instructions other than what one can find on their website under "knowledge base" and what is there seems to be all mixed up. I was told that is was set up to use 80 grit garnet only if that tells you anything. I made some various size orfaces to put in the hole in the bottom of the hopper and am using 120 grit cutting mirror glas mostly. As far as what jewel sizes I would imagine that it would have be one from something els that just happens to fit, they seem to only want it to be "as shipped"
 
Glad you are enjoying the Protomax. There's some misunderstanding here about fixturing on a waterjet. There's no shortcoming of the machine, control or software. This is like complaining the VMC is a bad design because it didn't come with vises. With a waterjet, you set homes/zero points relative to the hard stop home position of the table axes, not relative to the catch tank wall or slats. The catch tank and slats are not precision components.

To register a precise reference to an existing part edge, you bolt a fence to the tank, set a home at a fixed X/Y distance from the machine's absolute zero, and then use the jet to cut away the part of the fence in +X and +Y. Now you have precision edges in X and Y at known positions from the machine hard stops.

The fence gets worn away when you cut into it. Depending on your practices, it may last a few months or a few years. When it gets iffy, move the home and recut the fence.

There's a bunch of ways to do this in practice. You can push parts against the fence from the far side of the table, or clamp them to the fence, or integrate clamps into the fence. I'll post a pic of our clamp setup.

Its limited only by your imagination. We use a lot of 1/4" MDF for fixturing - clamp the MDF to the fence, set a supplemental zero position, then cut a silhouette of the part in the MDF (with the appropriate edge offset), press the part into the MDF and do second ops on an existing complex shape part. etc.
 
^ Yes but thats what he is saying that machine does not do. It does not keep track of its position as soon as its finished that programme. ANy laser or plasma i have been around very much has a origin in the programme, yes you can set it were you wish, but you can rerun the same cut paths time and time again from that point, the OP is saying you can not have - set a point any were with this control.
 








 
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