Essentials for cutting laminated materials
When you want to cut brittle and laminated materials such as marble, stone, glass, and composites you need to have some tricks up your sleeve as fragile materials such as these tend to form craters, cracks, or break during high pressure piercing.
We use a system by Flow that allows us to to pierce these materials easily, saving time and raw material, as well as enhancing the quality of the finished product.
Soft Pierce
Unlike normal high pressure piercing that is done at the maximum operating pressure of 3800 bar, soft piercing is done at 700 to 900 bar. That ensures that brittle and laminated materials do not get damaged during the piercing process.
Vacuum Assist
The other secret to not damaging these fragile materials during piercing is something called vacuum assist. The design pulls abrasive into the cutting head a split second before the waterjet starts so that the waterjet has abrasive particles entrained in the jet stream immediately. This ensures that abrasive is present in the jet stream as soon as it hits the material, thus eliminating delamination when cutting composite panels manufactured from carbon or fiberglass.
Below is a picture of Flow's UltraPierce™ system that we use:
Here are some samples of parts that were cut using this system. Note that there is no delamination of the layers that make up these panels.
We are specialists when it comes to cutting composite materials, so please contact us for an obligation free quote: CLICK HERE
