CUT -Competitive Use of waterjet Technology

Report, 2006

Abrasive waterjet (AWJ) is an important process for cutting modern engineering materials, such as stainless steel, hardened steel and aluminum. An efficient use of the current technology is considered a necessity for future success, foreseeing a growing competition from for instance Central and Eastern Europe. This network project thus focused on strengthening the competitiveness of the project members and of Nordic AWJ industry in general. The network of this project included the Swedish Waterjet Association and Tech Network Ronneby. These organizations played the major role in setting up the first Scandinavian Waterjet Conference, held in Ronneby in September 2006, where technical results of this project were displayed and presented. The most important technical result of the project is a computer model which has been developed and can be used for finding optimum parameter selection. The settings include for instance abrasive feed rate, water pressure and nozzle configuration. Examples have shown that the cost reduction potentially is in the range of 10-25%, which is higher than the initial expectations. The development has included discussions within the network concerning requirements on the model, as well as possible improvements working with preliminary computer models together with the companies.