From keeping us hydrated and healthy to putting out fires and saving lives, water is all around us. But when it comes to custom-cut products, water can be incredibly powerful and precise. With waterjet cutting, your parts can be shaped, sheared, and sliced using nothing but cold water and pressure.
That’s just the start. Here are some additional benefits of using waterjet cutting, with guidance on how to choose the best converting process for your material.
How Precision Waterjet Cutting Works
Instead of heat, waterjet cutting uses a high-pressure stream of concentrated water that slices through a variety of materials, such as dense rubber, plastic, and silicone, with streamlined precision. At American Flexible Products, our waterjet equipment produces a powerful stream of water with a max pressure of 90,000 psi, leaving your end product accurate, clean, and ready to use. And because there’s no heat involved, you won’t have to worry about burned or warped products.
One of the biggest benefits of waterjet cutting is that it is very precise. If your product has intricate designs or requires a very precise type of cut, waterjet cutting is a great option to consider.
At American Flexible Products, our computer-controlled waterjet equipment has an accuracy as low as .025 millimeters, creating tight tolerances and level, accurate edges, even when working with thicker materials. And to give our clients more design options, we use a 5-Axis cutting head, allowing us to create 3D designs, beveled edges, and much more.
This level of precision is especially important for custom components, prototypes, and multi-material assemblies. To learn more about waterjet cutting options from American Flexible Products, contact us today to speak with an owner.
Materials & Components Suitable for Waterjet Cutting Services
Waterjet cutting is great for a variety of materials because we can add abrasive compounds to the water stream. This process allows our engineers to cut almost any type of material, even multiple layers of material with different densities. It’s so powerful that we can even cut metal with a waterjet.
Some of the materials our abrasive jet cutting can handle include:
Waterjet cutting is great for a variety of materials because we can add abrasive compounds to the water stream. This process allows our engineers to cut almost any type of material – even multiple layers of material with different densities. Some of the materials our abrasive jet cutting can handle include:
With its ability to convert a wide range of materials, waterjet cutting is suitable for gaskets, vibration-damping components, composite materials, and much more.
Why Manufacturers Choose Custom Waterjet Cutting
From preserving material integrity to reducing secondary processing and minimizing waste, waterjet cutting offers many advantages.
Material Preservation
Unlike some types of material cutting, waterjet cutting can cut through workpieces without altering their structural integrity. Cutting processes that rely on heat, on the other hand, sometimes alter a material’s physical makeup.
This is because using heat-related cutting actually changes the molecular properties of certain materials, resulting in deformed, brittle, or weaker products. Since there’s no heat involved in waterjet cutting, you don’t have to worry about heat-affected zones in any of your products.
No Additional Finishing Needed
Waterjet cutting is often a first choice because it doesn’t leave stains on your material and maintains a high finish. Because of those factors, most materials do not require secondary finishing, thereby reducing cutting time and boosting overall efficiency.
Eco-Friendly
At American Flexible Products, our waterjet cutting involves a closed-loop process that recycles the water we use for cutting materials. Because this process uses cold water rather than heat, it does not produce fumes, smoke, or airborne dust when shaping materials such as rubber and silicone. In terms of environmental friendliness, waterjet cutting is near the top of the list.
When is Waterjet Cutting the Best Choice?
There are many custom converting processes to choose from, each with its own benefits. Waterjet cutting is ideal for:
- Heat-sensitive materials
- Thick or layered materials
- Intricate geometries or tight tolerances
- Prototyping
- Preserving a material’s structural integrity.
While waterjet converting has numerous benefits, it’s not the ideal solution for every application. For example, high-volume production runs with thin materials are often faster with die cutting or laser cutting once tooling is complete.
Waterjet cutting may also be unnecessarily precise for applications with simpler geometries or wider tolerances. AFP can help you decide what method is the most effective approach for your application.
Get a Free Waterjet Cutting Quote from American Flexible Products
American Flexible Products is a nationwide converter of flexible materials from foam to rubber to silicone and more. Every product is custom-cut and shaped to your design specs by our materials engineers. Wondering if waterjet cutting is right for your parts? Give us a call at 952-368-4225 to talk with one of our engineers. We’ll help you decide which type of shaping is best for your project.
Other forms of product cutting services from American Flexible Products include:
- Die Cutting
- Rotary Die Cutting
- Kiss Cutting
- Laser Cutting
- CNC Digital Cutting
- Slitting
- Skiving
- Rapid Prototype Cutting
