Waterjet Vac Fixture...

Has anyone ever needed to create a vacuum fixture to work with a waterjet? well... We made one.. Its interesting but i wish i could find a simpler solution. Not to mention the tooling needing to probably be replaced frequently.

I'm curious: what necessitated a vacuum fixture being used?

We've typically had success with keeping lighter materials from moving during cutting by submerging the sheet, sometimes with the addition of a couple basic squeeze clamps to the table for extra assurance.

Were you needing to jet something after forming, or an oddball shape?

JNieman said:

I'm curious: what necessitated a vacuum fixture being used?

We've typically had success with keeping lighter materials from moving during cutting by submerging the sheet, sometimes with the addition of a couple basic squeeze clamps to the table for extra assurance.

Were you needing to jet something after forming, or an oddball shape?

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Yup!!! The part is formed and this is an attempt to cut to final shape on this machine.

RevK said:

Yup!!! The part is formed and this is an attempt to cut to final shape on this machine.

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Well that's an interesting challenge. My waterjet work is usually so boring

I like it. That sounds like a fun project. My luck, I'd be tasked with designing a fixture after bidding it without any tooling budget, and a 1 week delivery date.

JNieman said:

Well that's an interesting challenge. My waterjet work is usually so boring

I like it. That sounds like a fun project. My luck, I'd be tasked with designing a fixture after bidding it without any tooling budget, and a 1 week delivery date.

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Feel free to pm me for details.... in particular, I'm not a fan of waterjets, they have a purpose in manufacturing but not my flavor, easy to program, finicky machines at best. In a multi stage project, it's the least "fun".,

Got any pictures?


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I can PM you pics and description/opinions. But I'm not sure how it would be viewed by my company if i posted them on a forum. Not that it is proprietary or anything.

Wonder if enough magnets would do the trick. Might need to wrap them for easy cleaning, depending on a bunch of variables...

Chip

Chip Chester said:

Wonder if enough magnets would do the trick. Might need to wrap them for easy cleaning, depending on a bunch of variables...

Chip

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It's carbon fiber parts.. so no magnets.

RevK I'm curious what waterjet you've run if you say it's finicky as in our experience it's definitely the most fun machine if you just want to go make a part quickly. My pet theory is there are a lot of not very easy to use waterjets out there and then there is Omax (and maybe others; it's the only one I have experience with) In our experience waterjet is the fastest way to make a great many parts, especially if you work in fields like automation where most of the time you're making custom parts in low quantities to connect purchased motion components. The finish is obviously not as fine as conventional CNC but we have in house powder coating so can finish parts really nicely in pretty much the time it takes to heat the part in the oven to cure the paint. I will allow that you need someone in the outfit who can do the maintenance on the machine as it does require more attention than your typical CNC but once you develop experience with the machine it's not difficult to keep it running well.

I've done a lot of weird fixtures on waterjet so if you PM me a picture I'd be most pleased to ponder it. I think a vacuum fixture would work but mostly if you're going around the outside of a part to cut a flange off and where you have everything clamped to the slats and the vacuum tube running deep into the tank and out the side so the fixture never gets cut. For something like cutting features in a molded carbon fiber part I could see this being wildly faster than conventional approaches.

RevK said:

I can PM you pics and description/opinions. But I'm not sure how it would be viewed by my company if i posted them on a forum. Not that it is proprietary or anything.

Click to expand...

No worries


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