At the Omax Corp. blog, writer Gretchen Salois profiles Waterjet Cutting of Indiana, which often attracts customers "because they know they can hand over drawings for an intricate job Friday afternoon, and receive them first thing Monday," she writes. The company cuts everything from skid plates for Indy 500 cars to magnets for the oil industry to elevator weights for buildings throughout the company's hometown of Indianapolis.
“I worked with a waterjet for an old employer, but was ready to start out on my own,” recalls Michael Trapp, owner of Waterjet Cutting of Indiana. ... The Indianapolis shop cuts carbon and stainless steels, Inconel, Hastalloy and exoticalloys. “We’ve cut skid plates for Indycars as well as 9-inch-thick manganese steel that was shipped to Europe to be used for high-speed trains,” Trapp says. “We’ve cut magnets for the oil industry down in Texas, signage, and steel weights used in elevators for a good portion of the buildings here in Indianapolis—we’ve touched a lot of this city.”
“Two weekends ago a guy from another waterjet shop brought us a job he didn’t have the capacity to fulfill,” recalls Trapp. “We pushed out in three days what would have taken them a few weeks to complete. We ran three different machines and managed to get orders out whether same or next day. We do what we can to make it fit into our schedule.”
The entire profile, with details on the business's waterjet equipment and software, is here.
Related Glossary Terms
- stainless steels
stainless steels
Stainless steels possess high strength, heat resistance, excellent workability and erosion resistance. Four general classes have been developed to cover a range of mechanical and physical properties for particular applications. The four classes are: the austenitic types of the chromium-nickel-manganese 200 series and the chromium-nickel 300 series; the martensitic types of the chromium, hardenable 400 series; the chromium, nonhardenable 400-series ferritic types; and the precipitation-hardening type of chromium-nickel alloys with additional elements that are hardenable by solution treating and aging.
- waterjet cutting
waterjet cutting
Fine, high-pressure (up to 50,000 psi or greater), high-velocity jet of water directed by a small nozzle to cut material. Velocity of the stream can exceed twice the speed of sound. Nozzle opening ranges from between 0.004" to 0.016" (0.l0mm to 0.41mm), producing a very narrow kerf. See AWJ, abrasive waterjet.
Author
Michael Anderson, former senior editor at Cutting Tool Engineering magazine, holds a master's degree in written communication from Eastern Michigan University. He has been professionally writing about manufacturing technology since 1998, including more than 10 years at the Society of Manufacturing Engineers.
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