Cut to the Market Chase

By Joe Feeley, Editor in Chief

To achieve needed performance, machine controls engineers quite naturally focus on the motion components—be they mechanical, electromechanical or electronic. Strict attention to the selection of servo motors, drives and their controllers, or even lineshafts and takeoffs in some cases, is where precision and accuracy of machine motion systems is optimized.

For many applications, however, those same engineers and machine builders have to pay an equal measure of attention to the structural framework in which that motion system operates, particularly for machines and applications in which performance, speed and cost maintain a delicate balance.

That's the case with today's waterjet cutting technology supplied by machine builder Omax (www.omax.com), Kent, Wash. Once considered a specialized and expensive approach, it is now cutting nearly everything from stone and metal to food products and paper.

Omax raised its global market competitiveness recently with a new linear motion and assembly design that resulted in introduction of a low-cost, waterjet cutting machine economical enough for any price-conscious market, including China, where Omax exports and sells machinery.

Broader Use

"People still see waterjet cutting as a specialty technology, which it isn't anymore," says Dr. John Olsen, vice president of operations at Omax. "It's easier to learn to use a waterjet than almost any other machine." Olsen says state-of-the-art waterjets now can do precision cuts and produce fine shapes, while maintaining high speed and throughput, making these machines entirely competitive with other traditional cutting methods. "With waterjet cutting, you achieve great material savings over milling because nesting is possible. It's faster than laser with materials thicker than 1 in., and it can machine copper, stone and other materials not cut by laser," says Olsen. "It might be slower than plasma cutting, but there's no slag and heat-affected edges, and while it's slightly less precise than wire EDM, it's much faster."

Omax, states Olsen, is the only fully integrated waterjet company that designs and produces its own pump, high-pressure plumbing, machine controller, software and tables.

Machine control is accomplished via a standard PC with all computation done in the PC. "The motion profile follows a drawing made on the PC, and the PC manages all acceleration and velocity profiles to control the jet geometry," states Olsen. "The controller anticipates the taper in the cut and tilts the head to produce square edges. Data sent via USB to a real-time microprocessor in turn sends timed signals to motors. Motors are either pulse and direction servos or stepping motors." In newer machines, says Olsen, the motion is provided by a traction drive, like a railroad, with position held by feedback from a linear tape. This, he says, gives the accuracy of a linear motor at greatly reduced cost.

So, What's the Problem?

The conventional approach to making cutting machines involves a lot of machining labor, says Olsen. "The key is to design a machine that has good precision but doesn't require a lot of skilled labor to produce it," he explains. "In China, you're competing with machine builders who have as low an overhead and labor cost as anybody and virtually all of the buyers there focus primarily on price. So between reducing labor requirements and some of our proprietary technology features we've developed, we saw we could offer good performance, but at a lower cost."

As noted, the Omax control system is PC-based. "PC prices are quite low now," says Olsen. "Chinese machine builders, on the other hand, tend to use standard machine tool controllers, so they don't interface with PCs. So if we build our machine structure in China and bring over the automation and controls, we can compete in that market."

Through extensive R&D, Omax developed a new Maxiem line of machines to provide proven technologies in a highly productive, cost-efficient package, adds Olsen. He says Omax focused on reducing its time-to-build, material costs and the need for specialized assembly methods, all the while maintaining machine throughput, accuracy and durability.

Measuring approximately 15-ft long by 7-ft wide, the Maxiem waterjet is a three-axis machine with a bridge gantry that holds the waterjet cutting head as it travels back and forth across the x-axis, with the cutting head moving side-to side and up-and-down along the y- and z-axes (Figure 1).