How deep hydro Abrasive Water jet machining can cut?

Answer 1

That depends on what you are looking to do. The Grand Canyon was essentially cut with this process, after all.

The limits to depth of cut for abrasive waterjet cutting and machining are not so much real limits, but it gets slower and slower the deeper you go / the farther from the nozzle the cut is.

The thicker you go, the slower, and it is an exponential function, so twice as thick is more than twice as slow. The equation for this can be approximately expressed as "Velocity = (1/Thickness^1.15)"

If you are talking about the realm of being practical, then here are some ball-park numbers:

• Steel: Starts to become impractical at about 3" (75mm) thick, depending on the shape. Some people cut up to maybe 12" thick, but rarely is that practical.
• Aluminum: About 1.5 times thicker than steel.
• Titanium: It cuts about the same as aluminum, though people often cut thicker because titanium is so expensive that waiting a long time in order to have the advantage of cutting with a narrow slit, and thus saving material, can be a huge money saver even though the cutting may be slow.
• Stone: Most stone cut with this technology is done to thicknesses of maybe up to 3", though it is quite reasonable to cut even thicker if you are willing to wait. The primary application here is granite and marble flooring and countertops.

It really is a question of "how long are you willing to wait / how much money are you willing to spend in consumables and machine time".

For mining applications people can cut thicker by cutting in, removing rock, cutting deeper, removing rock, etc. There are a lot of mining applications that I am not very familiar with that cut quite thick.

Hope this helps.