Any waterjet operators on here?
- Thread starter MarkG
- Start date
laser3kw
Well-known member
I have been around waterjets for 15 years. I was plant manager where we had one and later I was employed, in a different capacity, at a business that had one.
Programming and cutting are the good parts of the job, BUT.....
Obviously, you will work with wet items. Generally you don't get wet but it will happen.
Second, dirty. The water under high pressure, draws Garnet into the stream. Garnet is a Quartz product ground down to sand like consistency. The water Garnet slurry remains in the catch tack and has to be shoveled out frequently. Hard, heavy work.
You will have to refill the Garnet hopper, not bad maybe 30 ~ 50lb bags
Load and unload material. Some slabs maybe 6" thick and weigh a ton. Other material maybe sheet metal. Parts may be the size of a quarter or as big as the interior holding tank.
The high pressure pump and discharge nozzle are also high maintenance. You maybe expected to perform the routine rebuilding. Not terribly hard but tedious
Pumps generate heat. If it is in the same area, it maybe be hot and humid. Again not real uncomfortable.
Sum it up:
Wet
Dirty / heavy material
frequent maintenance.
Not to bad of a job. Know what you are getting into. Ask for a tour and see for yourself
best of luck
Programming and cutting are the good parts of the job, BUT.....
Obviously, you will work with wet items. Generally you don't get wet but it will happen.
Second, dirty. The water under high pressure, draws Garnet into the stream. Garnet is a Quartz product ground down to sand like consistency. The water Garnet slurry remains in the catch tack and has to be shoveled out frequently. Hard, heavy work.
You will have to refill the Garnet hopper, not bad maybe 30 ~ 50lb bags
Load and unload material. Some slabs maybe 6" thick and weigh a ton. Other material maybe sheet metal. Parts may be the size of a quarter or as big as the interior holding tank.
The high pressure pump and discharge nozzle are also high maintenance. You maybe expected to perform the routine rebuilding. Not terribly hard but tedious
Pumps generate heat. If it is in the same area, it maybe be hot and humid. Again not real uncomfortable.
Sum it up:
Wet
Dirty / heavy material
frequent maintenance.
Not to bad of a job. Know what you are getting into. Ask for a tour and see for yourself
best of luck
Last edited:
dr_clyde
Well-known member
If you're lucky they have a used garnet pump. Saves a **** ton of shoveling.
laser3kw
Well-known member
The last place I worked had a similar system. The only detractor was you still have to empty it. It was much easier and cleaner to pull the bag out and haul it to the dumpster. But, the catch tank slowly accumulated what the system did not pull out. At some point, you have to dig.
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dr_clyde
Well-known member
I have 2 friends with waterjets and I would think just being an operator would get pretty boring. If you are doing the cad work, and running multiple machines at once, it may be more interesting. But sometimes, the cycle time is measured in hours and days, not minutes. It would really **** if you just had to sit there and wait for it to cut full sheets of 2" steel or something.
steel 35
Well-known member
Local guy uses a pump truck (Turd Snatcher) and ****'s the tank clean once a month.
laser3kw
Well-known member
Yup! I have seen cycle times for one part easily eclipse the 16 hour mark. And that was on a small machine with a 60 x 130 bed. That machine operated in submerged mode and had tank water temperature control coolers. Tank temperature control was essential to control part tolerance.
Usually, when you had long cycle times, you were expected to do other functions such as deburr, drill, tap, or even run another machine.
My company has two water jets, both WardJet R series. We've developed all the operators from inside the company. It helps to have CNC experience, but not required. Our machines use IGEMS for developing the G code and then IKUHLU for controlling the waterjet. IGEMS is great because it makes the G code straight from AutoCAD drawings. What impresses me most about our operators is their creativity to manipulate the G code, or the machine control software to 'force' the waterjet to perform cuts that are typically outside it's functionality.
At my shop, we cut all materials, but our bread and butter is cutting either 10 or 15mm thick aluminum composite. As an operator, you might fine yourself hustling like crazy all day, moving multiple parts off the machine. Or, (this is much worse) you find you're cutting really thick material and the program will run for a whole shift or longer. At my shop, (because you can't leave the machine area 'just in case') you might find yourself being a local custodian of doing light fabrication/deburring work while you wait for the program to complete.
Waterjet operator is a physical job, always climbing up onto the grates and bending over picking up parts. Also, the garnet will dry out your skin something awful so if dry or cracked skin is an issue, you might want to think twice. Also, the tank water quality (at my shop anyway) is lousy and any open wounds will tend to get infected quickly.
Waterjet maintenance is constant. In use, the machine, plumbing, pump and intensifier basically consumes itself. My guys stop to replace cutting nozzles every 10-12 hours. They typically have to load the 2200lb garnet hopper after 3 shifts. They also rebuild the intensifier every 100 hours. Depending on what is being cut, programs with frequent starts and tops will fatigue the plumbing. When one of the high pressure lines (60k psi) let's go, it's interesting.
As mentioned earlier in the tread, the used garnet and drops need to be pulled from the tank weekly. We have a full time garnet removal system as a a pressurized extractor. Getting the garnrt and drops out of the tanks isn't that much actual work, but dealing with the bags of used garnet (every day) is a pain. They drip all over the place and 1 out of 6 will tear at the worst moment. When this happens, my guy have to shovel it up.
At my shop, we cut all materials, but our bread and butter is cutting either 10 or 15mm thick aluminum composite. As an operator, you might fine yourself hustling like crazy all day, moving multiple parts off the machine. Or, (this is much worse) you find you're cutting really thick material and the program will run for a whole shift or longer. At my shop, (because you can't leave the machine area 'just in case') you might find yourself being a local custodian of doing light fabrication/deburring work while you wait for the program to complete.
Waterjet operator is a physical job, always climbing up onto the grates and bending over picking up parts. Also, the garnet will dry out your skin something awful so if dry or cracked skin is an issue, you might want to think twice. Also, the tank water quality (at my shop anyway) is lousy and any open wounds will tend to get infected quickly.
Waterjet maintenance is constant. In use, the machine, plumbing, pump and intensifier basically consumes itself. My guys stop to replace cutting nozzles every 10-12 hours. They typically have to load the 2200lb garnet hopper after 3 shifts. They also rebuild the intensifier every 100 hours. Depending on what is being cut, programs with frequent starts and tops will fatigue the plumbing. When one of the high pressure lines (60k psi) let's go, it's interesting.
As mentioned earlier in the tread, the used garnet and drops need to be pulled from the tank weekly. We have a full time garnet removal system as a a pressurized extractor. Getting the garnrt and drops out of the tanks isn't that much actual work, but dealing with the bags of used garnet (every day) is a pain. They drip all over the place and 1 out of 6 will tear at the worst moment. When this happens, my guy have to shovel it up.