Techni Waterjet

alexf · Jan 27, 2019

Hello all,
I'm looking to add a Techni waterjet to our architectural metal fab shop and would love to hear peoples thoughts on these particular machines but mostly about my dilemma of whether the 5 axis head is something really worthwhile for the extra cost.

I like this machine due to the pump technology and it's drive simplicity as we will be running closed loop.We are not allowed to dump water down the drain. We will be cutting a variety of materials and even though I do not have a use for a 5 axis head currently that I can monetize I do not want to be in the position of wishing I bought it 6 months to a year from now. My main issue is not so much the cost of the head but the fact that it limits the cutting envelope on a 5'x10' machine to under 4' wide in the Y axis while active and the cost creep is to get a bigger table which would be tough to fit in the space.
Aside from the use for in house jobs I would like to offer our services to other shops in the are and cut quality is a major concern as there is a lot of this type of work going on. Being able to expand on the 5 axis would be great but I don't really know if there is much call for it but it would be great to hear back from other water jet operators/owners

Thanks

Street · Jan 27, 2019

I noted some on techni in this post https://www.practicalmachinist.com/...-plasma-welding-and-fab/omax-waterjet-358261/

Techni uses KMT pump ( american) and components they just make up the tank the software is done by ANCA who make cnc grinders both are australian companies.

alexf · Jan 27, 2019

Thank you for the link Street, I believe they have their own servo driven pump and moved away from KMT several years ago although I can't say if they make their current pump in house. No one else seems to be using the servo driven technology.

Street · Jan 27, 2019

had a look at the website, yes it appears to be a new pump.

Wonder how maintenance will go if its like the old one on seals and poppet valves, looks like they just got rid of the hyd drive but the ends look similar.
wonder if the service hours on seals will be similar ?

Check if they are using the KMT head still and some components. I suppose once you see it in person you can compare.

doubt if they changed their software maker though as they would have to develop the capability, look for the ANCA Logo on startup.
The older unit was not too bad to use the garnet feeder was troublesome as the bellows would wear and leak, but the pressure pot garnet feeder was pretty much trouble free. We put a screen to filter the garnet as when cutting the bags you could end up with tiny bits of plastic bag in the feeder it would block the nozzle.
The pressure pot garnet feeder ran about 3 hours runtime before requiring filling the newer style ran much longer that is when it was working. The place had both and both types where used when one was down and not working.
Only issue with the pressure pot feeder was if you overfill it and the garnet blows back into the air valve it can jam it.But was more reliable than the newer style.

Must have had two options earlier. I see they only show the newer troublesome garnet feeder.
make sure you get a good warranty on the garnet feeder!

We setup a recovery system for the garnet with a external tank, the big pallet bag would fit in the tank. A submersible pump would sit in the end of the water jet it would pump to the external tank and overflow back to the water jet.
The garnet would come out of suspension and fill the bag up, it would get emptied when full with the forklift. Only time you couldn't use it was when your cutting full table then we took the pump out for those short periods.
It saves having to clean out the tank, the submersible pump lasts about a year before the garnet wears it out. you have to be careful not the cut the pickup hose though.
Not sure if your going to use the angle head we didn't have it and i didn't see any jobs that needed it, probably because we didn't take any of those jobs.

the place had the floating head and it was useful on some jobs not all.
Nesting was helpful on some jobs.

jmullett · Jan 28, 2019

A couple of observations I can offer after having our WardJet X-Series 1530 for about 2 years now. It has truly been a great machine for us. They along with Accustream/Hypertherm, where we buy some of our Flow pump parts from, have offered great support.

Don't underestimate the maintenance and disposal costs for this type of equipment. Our Flow branded 60kpsi intensifier pump needs to have new high pressure seals at around 400-500 hours, and you can expect to be rebuilding at least one of either a check valve, bleed-off valve or on/off valve within that time frame as well. After you invest in some tools you can handle the labor internally with $400 in parts maybe 10 hours of labor within that maintenance cycle.

Garnet removal and disposal does cost time and money. You may also be in a unique position of higher than normal disposal costs associated with the left coast. We run through about 40 thousand pounds a year in spent garnet. It is recyclable into other abrasive products, but you will have to cover freight to the recycle facility which will most likely want you to have a full truckload bulk bagged and ready before transport. You might want to have this sorted out before you start cutting. The spent garnet removal process can be done a number of ways and there are many companies that offer various do-dads and systems to help, from modest cost to tens of thousands of dollars. We have found that 2 unfortunate "dirty" guys with shovels and a third "clean" guy operating a bucket loader for a full hard work day every 6 months works best for us. Also expect to change your grates once a year.

We don't have 5 axis capability with our abrasive waterjet cutter, but we do have it on a water only machine. From what I have seen, the multi axis heads come in 2 flavors, a more limited travel tilting variety for taper control and the full on 5 axis with 90 degrees of A-axis and C-axis travel. The latter having high pressure swivel joints that will require some maintenance too as the swivel joints will eventually develop leaks. Unless you have a market for it, I just couldn't see the value in the high end very expensive 5 axis head unless you were planning on doing high volume bevel reliefs for welding blanks or some high cost part for some customer. You can get lower cost manually swiveling bevel heads for say putting a single bevel on one edge of a slab of granite or steel plate. From a taper standpoint we see only about 0.005" per inch material thickness of taper in parts that we cut which typically don't exceed 1.5 inches in thickness.

However one thing I recommend is some sort of automatic height sensing or crash protection. We added this option to our machine, and it has been worth every penny in the money saved from broken nozzles, which cost about $85-$100 a piece and last about 60 hours if you don't snap them. We cut a lot of 304 stainless and it really likes to move/stress relieve on you especially around the edge of the plate. The resulting bow in the material can easily crash into the nozzle. You can see the Standard Height Sensing option on the WardJet site (Trust me you will want this.):

Waterjet Accessories

Lastly I can recommend going to a diamond orifice as soon as is practical. We spent a year replacing ruby/sapphire orifices every 40 hours until we discovered the joy of the 500 plus hour diamonds. Most companies warranty them for 400 to 500 hours runtime as long as you run a thimble filter before them.

Street · Jan 29, 2019

Plus one on the diamond orifice, sometimes they run longer sometimes they run less luck of the draw on those but 800 hours was one of the longest runs.

10 hours of labour to change seals is excessive you can do it well under that on the KMT pump, but agree learning to do it yourself will save you money and down time.
Check the new pump out, on the KMT the inlet valves which don't go often very rarely we had to grind the end housing and sand flat on a piece of glass and blue the seat to check how it was, it worked fine after that treatment. The outlet valves have seat and poppet so all replaced in one but more common to fail, you have to know which end is at fault.
Usually there is a light indicator which signifies which end is pumping so you know which end is troublesome. You will see a pressure drop on the water gauge then you know you have a seal or valve issue, there was a tattle hole that spit water out maybe they still have those?

Get a pressure pot garnet feeder if you can the newer style with the optic sensors and bottom feeder we had the most trouble with, if you cannot feed garnet the machine is down.
The pinch valve was common thing to go, it would bubble the garnet and you knew it was leaking, a leak means it will not pressurise the pot and no garnet is fed to the chamber on the machine. Dry air must be fed to it as well or garnet gets wet and the feed stops.
The newer style had the longest run time between top ups but thats if it was running again very troublesome we found.
Keep common spares so you don't have to wait for parts machine uptime is more important than spares cost.

Get them to give you a demonstration of how to diagnose and replace parts once you learn your good to go.

Dupa3872 · Jan 29, 2019

Wow lots of good information. A water Jet is in out future and I will be educating myself well before we start looking.

Thanks

Make Chips Boys !

Ron

jmullett · Jan 29, 2019

Street said:
10 hours of labour to change seals is excessive ...

Agreed,just for the seals 10 hours is a bit excessive. I was generally saying to plan on 10 hours of maintenance labor every 400-500 hours of cutting to be safe. These machines have consumables that need to be addressed often enough.

Street said:
Get a pressure pot garnet feeder if you can the newer style with the optic sensors and bottom feeder we had the most trouble with, if you cannot feed garnet the machine is down. The pinch valve was common thing to go, it would bubble the garnet and you knew it was leaking, a leak means it will not pressurise the pot and no garnet is fed to the chamber on the machine. Dry air must be fed to it as well or garnet gets wet and the feed stops. The newer style had the longest run time between top ups but thats if it was running again very troublesome we found.

Yes our bulk hopper has the small pressure pot on the bottom that refills itself automatically. It works much better than the venturi style that the old Flow systems used. Our pinch valves seems to be holding up so far and luckily our refrigerated air dryer on our Atlas-Copco screw compressor yields incredibly dry air. Now we do occasionally have to change the pinch bladder on our mini-hopper on the machine, but overall Ward's simple min-hopper design proves to work quite elegantly. I know there are more complicated electric mini-hoppers, but I hate to have to clean one after a water blow back event.

Street said:
Keep common spares so you don't have to wait for parts machine uptime is more important than spares cost.

Get them to give you a demonstration of how to diagnose and replace parts once you learn your good to go.

I'll tell you there are a lot of online videos from Ward, Accustream, and other parts places that provide a great service to users who are are maintaining these things.

alexf · Jan 29, 2019

jmullett said:
A couple of observations I can offer after having our WardJet X-Series 1530 for about 2 years now. It has truly been a great machine for us. They along with Accustream/Hypertherm, where we buy some of our Flow pump parts from, have offered great support.

Don't underestimate the maintenance and disposal costs for this type of equipment. Our Flow branded 60kpsi intensifier pump needs to have new high pressure seals at around 400-500 hours, and you can expect to be rebuilding at least one of either a check valve, bleed-off valve or on/off valve within that time frame as well. After you invest in some tools you can handle the labor internally with $400 in parts maybe 10 hours of labor within that maintenance cycle.

Garnet removal and disposal does cost time and money. You may also be in a unique position of higher than normal disposal costs associated with the left coast. We run through about 40 thousand pounds a year in spent garnet. It is recyclable into other abrasive products, but you will have to cover freight to the recycle facility which will most likely want you to have a full truckload bulk bagged and ready before transport. You might want to have this sorted out before you start cutting. The spent garnet removal process can be done a number of ways and there are many companies that offer various do-dads and systems to help, from modest cost to tens of thousands of dollars. We have found that 2 unfortunate "dirty" guys with shovels and a third "clean" guy operating a bucket loader for a full hard work day every 6 months works best for us. Also expect to change your grates once a year.

We don't have 5 axis capability with our abrasive waterjet cutter, but we do have it on a water only machine. From what I have seen, the multi axis heads come in 2 flavors, a more limited travel tilting variety for taper control and the full on 5 axis with 90 degrees of A-axis and C-axis travel. The latter having high pressure swivel joints that will require some maintenance too as the swivel joints will eventually develop leaks. Unless you have a market for it, I just couldn't see the value in the high end very expensive 5 axis head unless you were planning on doing high volume bevel reliefs for welding blanks or some high cost part for some customer. You can get lower cost manually swiveling bevel heads for say putting a single bevel on one edge of a slab of granite or steel plate. From a taper standpoint we see only about 0.005" per inch material thickness of taper in parts that we cut which typically don't exceed 1.5 inches in thickness.

However one thing I recommend is some sort of automatic height sensing or crash protection. We added this option to our machine, and it has been worth every penny in the money saved from broken nozzles, which cost about $85-$100 a piece and last about 60 hours if you don't snap them. We cut a lot of 304 stainless and it really likes to move/stress relieve on you especially around the edge of the plate. The resulting bow in the material can easily crash into the nozzle. You can see the Standard Height Sensing option on the WardJet site (Trust me you will want this.):

Waterjet Accessories

Lastly I can recommend going to a diamond orifice as soon as is practical. We spent a year replacing ruby/sapphire orifices every 40 hours until we discovered the joy of the 500 plus hour diamonds. Most companies warranty them for 400 to 500 hours runtime as long as you run a thimble filter before them.

Great information,thank you all.
I'm definitely leaning away from the 5 axis mostly because I would need to jump up in table size to be able to fully cut 5'x10' sheets and I can't really justify it unless I'm able to get into that sort of work. Standard cutting I can have this machine working and paying for it self in no time.

Judging from videos I have seen about their pump it seems that seal changes are about 15mins per side and I am wanting to be able to do the service myself. Another positive about the pump is that it only makes pressure when it is actually cutting so the rest of the time it turns off which seems that wear and tear should be a lot better than a direct drive or intensifier pump. I believe it strokes at 80 times per minute.

Height sensing and terrain following is a must for me as I've never seen a flat piece of material stay that way once the cutting starts and I need the ability to walk away from the machine and do other things. I've gotten pretty good at listening to our cnc plasma and knowing if it's running ok just by the sound.

The machine comes with the diamond orifice so I'll keep it that way. I've got a couple of employees who don't mind what I throw at them so they will be awarded the table clean out job when necessary.

Cheers all

Street · Jan 30, 2019

The floating head which keeps the nozzle at a set height still can get hang ups on small cutout pieces especially if they don't fall down it will pop the break off head and machine will stop, not much you can do about it, happens occasionally.
Floating head is good on uneven material until a part drops.

One more consumable is the slats that run across the table everything under the nozzle gets cut including those after a while you can turn them end for end but thats about it.
They get replaced quite regularly if cutting a lot.
We had a broom handle with a small bolt in it to reach over to the end of the slat to pull it back and lift it out, the reverse happens when fitting.
Just a little thing but handy.
The submersible pump idea stops the need to clean the tank all the time its worth it if you have some room and a fork to lift the bag. The machine at the place i worked at was never cleaned of drops while i was there, they get cut again to a certain extent laying in the path of the nozzle, plenty of bags of garnet where emptied you tend to go through a lot of garnet if using the machine quite a bit. Hate to clean garnet by hand it would be a real pain to get into the tank.

alexf · Jan 31, 2019

Street said:
The floating head which keeps the nozzle at a set height still can get hang ups on small cutout pieces especially if they don't fall down it will pop the break off head and machine will stop, not much you can do about it, happens occasionally.
Floating head is good on uneven material until a part drops.

One more consumable is the slats that run across the table everything under the nozzle gets cut including those after a while you can turn them end for end but thats about it.
They get replaced quite regularly if cutting a lot.
We had a broom handle with a small bolt in it to reach over to the end of the slat to pull it back and lift it out, the reverse happens when fitting.
Just a little thing but handy.
The submersible pump idea stops the need to clean the tank all the time its worth it if you have some room and a fork to lift the bag. The machine at the place i worked at was never cleaned of drops while i was there, they get cut again to a certain extent laying in the path of the nozzle, plenty of bags of garnet where emptied you tend to go through a lot of garnet if using the machine quite a bit. Hate to clean garnet by hand it would be a real pain to get into the tank.

I like the idea of the submersible pump even if it just helps a little. Seems a simple and cheap way to extend the time between clean outs. I'm imagining that thin material is where most of the issues arise as the parts won't have enough weight to stay put. I would guess that you have to get a little creative with sheet clamping.

Street · Feb 1, 2019

Just to add the submersible pump has to have enough flow to keep the garnet suspended in water till it reaches the external tank with bag in it, too little of a flow and the garnet comes out of suspension in the pump lines and blocks it up.it is how you know when the pump is worn out it won't pump enough flow and continually blocks up, a teardown of the pump confirms it is usually worn out. ( life of pump is about a year) You can run the pump intermittently if your worried about using electricity, but i ran it all the time the machine was running.

We put literally tons of garnet through the machine, its amazing how much garnet you use when working the machine full time day after day, lots of billable hours though.

to keep sheets in place we had some 3" x 1" x 3' bars we put around in various places, you have to be careful with weights because the head can hit them if they are in the wrong spots.

For items near a edge we use the principle of clamping in a mill a outrigger support with a lever to the part and the weight sits on the lever. You loose some force but you can sit the lever 5mm in on the part, The levers we used were bits of cutoffs about 2mm thick x 200 mm long x 100 mm wide they bend a little but put enough down force to keep the parts on the table in place. They were hard tool steel so didn't bend much.
They won't hit the nozzle being so low and give plenty of room for the cutting head.

Some times we moved them if they could not be located far away from the cut, i.e. do a run of say 3 rows stop the machine move the weights another 3 rows away repeat.
You have to be at the machine though and cannot leave it unattended.

you can program the sheet size in the setup it shows how close you are going to cut to the edge this helps with setup.

To cut items squarely and for easy setup we made a set square like piece of plate and inserted in in the tank locating on the left edge and front edge, we then took a cut along both edges to make sure they were square to the cutting lines of the machine, it was about 6mm thick plate.
Just placing a part in the machine touching the edge we knew it would turn out parallel when cutting.
The square was checked occasionally to make sure it was still seated properly it saves some time setting up parts.
The added bonus was we knew the machine was within limits and would not overtravel when placing items on this edge.

Waterjet2017 · Feb 5, 2019

What type of submersible pump are you using? I have the BART Removal tool that works great but I would like to have something running all the time. Thanks

Street · Feb 5, 2019

Not sure what the brand was i didn't actually buy it the business did, it was just a cast iron body pump and insulated so it was submersible in this case a 240 volt 50 hz pump, not 3 phase. looked like this one shape wise https://www.gstore.com.au/davey-d15va-multipurpose-vortex-sumppump.html we put a hose on the outlet to reach the external tank and a hose on the suction side to move around the tank, we had to drill and tap the housing to suit a barb fitting so a hose could be attached, we put a simple screen on the end of the hose in case it picked up big bits of plastic which will jam the impeller.

One housing keeping thing with drawings if you draw double lines the machine won't like it and will try to cut the line twice, also if you draw a part make sure you complete the circle so to speak if you have any unjoined lines you cannot apply offsets to the part.
It will also not fill in the shape with a shade so you know what you have done on the CAD import drawing. It will have to be fixed before you cut anything.
Some times you can fix it on the machine using the machines simple cad system other times you have to redo the CAD file if its a complex part and re import the file.

Toolbert · Feb 7, 2019

As to the OP question about the merit of the 5-axis head. I ran an OMAX 55100 with their 5-axis Tilt-a-jet for a couple years before that situation ended after which I bought an entry-level Maxiem for my own business and never looked back. The 5-axis option would have added 50% to the cost of the machine so I chose to skip it. 9 years into running the Maxiem, I don't think we've lost a single opportunity on account of not having 5 axis.

My sense with the 5 axis is it's worth it if you're cutting a lot of plate and you need the taper compensation - i.e. getting cut edges square within .001" instead of .005". Or if you're doing high $$$ work that needs true 5 axis - beveling plate edges for welding, cutting dovetail joints in steel plate :-) etc.

Cutting plate, taper compensation with 5 axis can actually save you $$$ by enabling faster cuts at lower quality, while yielding parts with better dimensional accuracy than a high quality cut on a 3-axis machine. In some scenario that alone could pay for the 5-axis cost in months.

The flip side is in routine sheet cutting, and thinner plate, cutting in 5-axis mode was more likely to make worse parts, because it's so sensitive to the nozzle standoff - any error in Z results in significant errors in X and Y. I eventually left taper compensation disabled for most work.

A terrain follower helps in theory but I'm skeptical as to how well a terrain follower and a 5-axis head really interplay. I'm not the one to answer that.

The true 5-axis and 6-axis (tilt head with rotary axis) machines can do some amazing 3D work, but it's expensive to plan, program and set up - need to be doing pretty high $$$ work to pay for those options. OMAX has invested in some pretty cool CAM software to go directly from Solidworks 3D models to 5- and 6-axis machine programming. My sense is that pencils out only in the high $ industries - aero, oil, medical.

alexf · Feb 8, 2019

Toolbert said:
As to the OP question about the merit of the 5-axis head. I ran an OMAX 55100 with their 5-axis Tilt-a-jet for a couple years before that situation ended after which I bought an entry-level Maxiem for my own business and never looked back. The 5-axis option would have added 50% to the cost of the machine so I chose to skip it. 9 years into running the Maxiem, I don't think we've lost a single opportunity on account of not having 5 axis.

My sense with the 5 axis is it's worth it if you're cutting a lot of plate and you need the taper compensation - i.e. getting cut edges square within .001" instead of .005". Or if you're doing high $$$ work that needs true 5 axis - beveling plate edges for welding, cutting dovetail joints in steel plate :-) etc.

Cutting plate, taper compensation with 5 axis can actually save you $$$ by enabling faster cuts at lower quality, while yielding parts with better dimensional accuracy than a high quality cut on a 3-axis machine. In some scenario that alone could pay for the 5-axis cost in months.

The flip side is in routine sheet cutting, and thinner plate, cutting in 5-axis mode was more likely to make worse parts, because it's so sensitive to the nozzle standoff - any error in Z results in significant errors in X and Y. I eventually left taper compensation disabled for most work.

A terrain follower helps in theory but I'm skeptical as to how well a terrain follower and a 5-axis head really interplay. I'm not the one to answer that.

The true 5-axis and 6-axis (tilt head with rotary axis) machines can do some amazing 3D work, but it's expensive to plan, program and set up - need to be doing pretty high $$$ work to pay for those options. OMAX has invested in some pretty cool CAM software to go directly from Solidworks 3D models to 5- and 6-axis machine programming. My sense is that pencils out only in the high $ industries - aero, oil, medical.

That's pretty much the way I'm leaning. I don't want to try to go after super high dollar work and the headache that brings to justify the expense of buying an add on that I don't really need at the moment. One of the biggest issues for me is that the 5 axis head would limit the sheet cut size on a 5'x10' and I don't want the cost to get a bigger table. I think I'll be very happy with a standard head that i can put to work immediately.

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