water jet abrasive recycling

Any one have any experience with the abrasive recycling system that Hypertherm is offering? Seems pretty enticing considering the large volume of garnet we go through.

thoughts??

Based on the recycling grit blasters i have been around, i would expect a drop in performance, new grit has clean sharp fractured edges, used, there duller, reused there duller still, thats not to say the basic idea may not work fine a limited number of times through, it may well be cost effective to if you use it a good few times, but just realize its going to come with costs and run time penalties. If it can still work out cheaper at the end of the week though thats what really matters.

Blending used in with new may well make the reduced performance so minimal its not noticeable too.

From the business stand point i would want some seriously proven results as presumably such a system is not cheap, but hypertherms normally pretty dang good at doing what they say they will and at least all there plasma stuff i have been around there ratings are very real world achievable or can be bettered. hence i would presume they have the accurate numbers you need to for the real world cost saving ratios and such to you so you can work out your real world savings or not. presumably such a system uses a fair bit of additional power and no doubt is yet another bit to keep maintained too. The blast grit recyler i was around very much spent its life eating its self, abrasive streams just cause high wear on anything they pass through.

I know a guy who is an engineer there, let me ask his opinion.

Edit- Talked my friend, he is THE engineer on that product and is going to respond.

Hey guys, Kustomizingkid pointed me to this thread and I'd like to provide some information about the Ecosift.

The Ecosift isn't for everyone, but, if you meet most of the following criteria, it's an amazing product:
- Cut at 60 ksi or below. At 60K there is about 50% recoverable abrasive. At higher pressures (and therefore jet velocity) the garnet fractures more and there isn't as much recoverable abrasive.
- Do not cut with plastic bricks or wood to back parts, this will clog the system.
- Use 80 mesh garnet. The recycler recovers 80 grit garnet, so, of course this is what it will have the highest yield rate with.
- Additional utilities include: 60A breaker (system is 34 FLA), 5 SCFM air supply, and 4 GPM freshwater
- Use a lot of abrasive. If you use about 20 tons/mo, 1 ecosift will pay for itself in about 2 years (factoring in capital costs, electricity, water, and replacement parts).
- We expect an average yield rate of 120 lb/hr
- Can be used with an automated waste removal system (fed directly into the Ecosift), or standalone (bags of used abrasive poured into a hopper).

The quality of the recovered abrasive is quite good, our testing has proved the cut quality is as good as new hardrock abrasive and often better than new alluvial. As with any moving parts in an abrasive environment, parts do wear on the system. With proper daily checks and preventative maintenance, the machine is quite reliable. Will your operator be happy to add more tasks to his job? (removing bags of waste, replacing bags of recycled garnet, checking screens for wear, etc.) probably not. But, the buyer/accountant/owner is always thrilled with the machine seeing their costs of new abrasive and their cost of abrasive to landfill cut in half.

PM me if you'd like to learn more.

Ward jet used to sell a recycling system. I don't know if it is the same type of technology. Given the high initial cost, I would definitely look into a used one to improve the cost benefit. I saw one of the machinery dealers advertising two units for sale recently.

robert123 said:

Ward jet used to sell a recycling system. I don't know if it is the same type of technology. Given the high initial cost, I would definitely look into a used one to improve the cost benefit. I saw one of the machinery dealers advertising two units for sale recently.

Click to expand...

Yes, our Ecosift recycling system is based on WARDJet's machine. We worked together to add a plethora of automated features and increase the recycling rate for the new system. When WARDJet was purchased by AXYZ we became the sole owner of the technology.

The WARD Pro was a good machine. The customers who have upgraded to the Ecosift are very happy with the new automation.