I have used a techni they are made in Australia the software is made my ANCA most of the machine is made by techni not sure on the pumps now as they changed to a new system.
As stated can be dirty and consume garnet bags by the ton, the air pot style garnet feeder is the most reliable the newer garnet feeders are not as reliable and problematic. The one pictured the air valve leaks when worn and bubbles the garnet in the feeder it will then not feed you need to replace the rubber valve in it, major pain in the backside.
You also consume nozzles quite regularly and the old ones consume seals and valves in the pump system so you must know how to fix the pump otherwise your stuck till a technican comes to fix it for you. You must know how to troubleshoot which end requires work as all parts don't fail at the same time. The place i worked at ran them till they failed no preventative maintenance. I fixed them at that time.
The software is quite good you import cad files in dxf and it automatically creates cutter path you have to put in material your cutting and thickness the feeds are worked out from data in the system. Their is also a auto nest option which helps with many parts on one sheet they can be of different types or the same type get this option its really handy. Otherwise you have to manually do it and it sucks up time really quick.
you can alter your lead in and lead out for placement and length.
Water jet can be used on NON ferrous material stone, timber, plastics, rubber and has the benefit of no heat effected zone on tool steels.
Thin sheets of rubber require you to mount them, i.e. multiple sheet thickness between ply bolted at the corners then you cut the lot including boards otherwise the thin sheets move and you don't get accurate parts. The boards are then a consumable part.
On other rubber we use wax cardboard on the table so the sheet doesn't sag between the slats the wax cardboard is waterproof and lasts long enough to cut the sheet we used to get this free from a grocer.you just cut them with a box cutter to fit the table, i.e. spread them out.
speaking of slats these get cut up and require periodical replacement as well they are just thin gal sheet cut into strips.
You can cut plate for general fabrication but i think it will be quicker and cheaper for this product to be cut on a laser cutter.
It is slow on thicker steel plate.
Mostly i did tool steels, a lot in the hard state and some in the soft annealed state.
The charge out rate the boss used was $3 a minute most of the smaller parts where under 4 minutes a part so quite quick.
Occasionally we did full sheets of 20mm aluminium that ran 6 hours that really gives it a workout.
The place also had a garnet recovery system for the tank a submersible pump, pumped from the machine to a external tank while the machine was running. In the external tank was one of the bags the garnet came in, it overflowed back to the machine. The garnet came out of suspension in the tank and filled the bag up. when full we removed the bag from the tank with the forklift and the bag was carted away in a skip.
This system saves you from manually emptying the machine tank by shovel which takes a long time and is messy.
You also can go through a lot of garnet if you use the machine constantly and makes the running of the machine easier. Any offcuts that get into the tank tend to get cut up from the watejet so the machine runs for a long time before you need to clean it out, years in fact.
The submersible pump lasts about a year pumping garnet before its worn out and then you get another one.
I have only used techni so you will have to check out Omax by others recommendation. here is the link to techni.
Water Jet Machine | Waterjet Machine | Waterjet Cutting Machine
if your a fabrication shop doing mostly steel look to a laser cutter and look at Amada a japanese machine.
Stay away from chinese made machines.