Waterjet Application
General Application
Compared to cutting with pure water, the element of water, as a pure waterjet in combination with high pressure, is no longer sufficient for cutting hard materials. To achieve a higher cutting performance for hard materials, sharp-edged cutting sand (garnet sand, commonly also called abrasive sand) is added to the waterjet generated with high pressure. The process of waterjet cutting with pure water is particularly environmentally friendly. The water can be recycled and reused with relatively little effort.
Metal
Stone, Ceramics & Glass
Abrasive waterjet cutting: Metal, Stone, Ceramics & Glass
Abrasive waterjet cutting is used for materials like stone, glass, carbon, copper, steel, aluminium, brass, sheet metal, ceramics, plastics and many more. As a rule of thumb: Abrasive waterjets can cut materials up to the hardness of the abrasive sand used and up to a thickness of approx. 300 mm.
Due to the wide variety of applications for waterjet cutting in industry, STM waterjet cutting systems with original abrasive equipment can nevertheless also be used for pure water cutting. This means that every STM waterjet cutting system can be retrofitted or upgraded for cutting a wide variety of materials.
Especially when working with heavy cutting parts, further advantages of STM cutting systems come into play. Even particularly massive materials can be processed with the standard equipment of a heavy-duty support for workpieces up to 1,000 kg/m². An additional module of the STM cutting systems for waterjet cutting with abrasive sand is the automatic abrasive discharge.
These abrasive rinsing systems (STM BasicClean as well as STM OneClean) are smart and efficient solutions for cleaning and discharging water and abrasive. This allows water as well as abrasive sand to be reused and operational costs to be reduced.
Seals
Plastics & Foam
Pure waterjet cutting: Seals, Plastics, Foam & other soft materials
In pure water cutting, soft materials are cut exclusively with the medium water at a speed of mach 2. This includes cutting foams, rubber, insulating materials, foils, felt, cork, seals, wood and many other soft materials
Another special feature of pure water cutting of plastics and foams is that even cutting thicknesses of over 300 mm are possible without any problems. The high cutting speed is an additional impressive advantage in this cutting process.
Due to the particularly wide range of applications for cutting with pure water, every waterjet cutting machine in the STM product series is also excellently suited for pure water cutting. This technique is used, among other things, for cutting seals, insulating materials, rubber, foam or other
plastics, but also in the food industry. All plastic processors and the woodworking industry also appreciate the advantages of waterjet cutting.
Every STM pure water cutting system can be individually equipped with workpiece supports perfectly tailored to the application. STM pure water supports with wire or stainless steel grates with extra-thin support surfaces prevent the sensitive materials becoming fully saturated with water and are designed to have a particularly long service life. In the machine basin, additional, modular cartridges can be installed as backsplash protection with slanted slats or ceramic balls. STM also offers solutions with cutting heads on adjustable cantilevers for pure cutting which can produce several parts at a time and thus significantly increase efficiency.