Compact waterjet cutting machine sits on a desktop
The story of Wazer Inc. is a story familiar to all fabricators: The company founders needed a better way to cut metal, so they found a way to do it. Nisan Lerea and Matt Nowicki, the company founders, just happened to design and build their own desktop waterjet, which is a slightly new wrinkle to this type of story.Get more news about Desktop Waterjet,you can vist our website!
In fact, to further go against familiar story lines, the duo didn’t develop its new machine tool in a two-car garage. The development work took place mostly in a laboratory space in Brooklyn, N.Y., following a successful Kickstarter campaign, which launched in September 2016. The work over the last couple of years was aimed at building a commercial version of the desktop waterjet that Lerea and five other students built as part of their senior design project at the University of Pennsylvania back in 2012.
The fabrication lab at Penn was the place Lerea first recognized the need for a new way to cut metal. He and his engineer friends were on a team that built race cars and competed against teams from other colleges. The lab had a low-powered CO2 laser cutting machine that was useful for cutting plywood and plastic, but not for sheet metal. That’s when Lerea started to think that maybe a waterjet could do the trick. The senior design project proved the idea was a sound one.
“We realized the waterjet was not well-explored in the price range and footprint that we were targeting,” Lerea said. “We knew that industrial waterjets were capable of cutting through multiple inches of thick steel, and we knew as a university such a tool would be super useful if it could just cut 1/8-in. steel or a ¼-in. aluminum.”
By the time they were ready to graduate, the team had built a functioning desktop waterjet prototype. It had computer numerical controls and was capable of cutting ¼-in. aluminum.
“What I think was cool was that by starting from scratch, without any prior knowledge about waterjet cutting machines, we were able to take a step back and kind of redevelop the machine from the ground up through a completely different lens,” Lerea said. “What we knew we needed was a small machine that was accessible and easy to use, inside and out. So that’s where a lot of the development was focused.”The cutting area is 12 by 18 in. and completely enclosed when the door is shut. It can cut 0.125-in. 6160 aluminum at 1.7 in. per minute (IPM), 0.125-in. 316 stainless steel at 0.7 IPM, and 0.125-in. 1018 steel at 0.9 IPM.
It uses 80 mesh garnet as the abrasive for cutting and has an abrasive flow rate of 0.33 pound per minute. Lerea declined to share specifications related to horsepower and abrasive pressure.
The waterjet also comes with browser-based programming software that allows the maker or fabricator to create a part design easily and the resulting cutting path quickly. Users select the material from a library and input the material thickness, and the waterjet is ready for part production.
The story of Wazer Inc. is a story familiar to all fabricators: The company founders needed a better way to cut metal, so they found a way to do it. Nisan Lerea and Matt Nowicki, the company founders, just happened to design and build their own desktop waterjet, which is a slightly new wrinkle to this type of story.Get more news about Desktop Waterjet,you can vist our website!
In fact, to further go against familiar story lines, the duo didn’t develop its new machine tool in a two-car garage. The development work took place mostly in a laboratory space in Brooklyn, N.Y., following a successful Kickstarter campaign, which launched in September 2016. The work over the last couple of years was aimed at building a commercial version of the desktop waterjet that Lerea and five other students built as part of their senior design project at the University of Pennsylvania back in 2012.
The fabrication lab at Penn was the place Lerea first recognized the need for a new way to cut metal. He and his engineer friends were on a team that built race cars and competed against teams from other colleges. The lab had a low-powered CO2 laser cutting machine that was useful for cutting plywood and plastic, but not for sheet metal. That’s when Lerea started to think that maybe a waterjet could do the trick. The senior design project proved the idea was a sound one.
“We realized the waterjet was not well-explored in the price range and footprint that we were targeting,” Lerea said. “We knew that industrial waterjets were capable of cutting through multiple inches of thick steel, and we knew as a university such a tool would be super useful if it could just cut 1/8-in. steel or a ¼-in. aluminum.”
By the time they were ready to graduate, the team had built a functioning desktop waterjet prototype. It had computer numerical controls and was capable of cutting ¼-in. aluminum.
“What I think was cool was that by starting from scratch, without any prior knowledge about waterjet cutting machines, we were able to take a step back and kind of redevelop the machine from the ground up through a completely different lens,” Lerea said. “What we knew we needed was a small machine that was accessible and easy to use, inside and out. So that’s where a lot of the development was focused.”The cutting area is 12 by 18 in. and completely enclosed when the door is shut. It can cut 0.125-in. 6160 aluminum at 1.7 in. per minute (IPM), 0.125-in. 316 stainless steel at 0.7 IPM, and 0.125-in. 1018 steel at 0.9 IPM.
It uses 80 mesh garnet as the abrasive for cutting and has an abrasive flow rate of 0.33 pound per minute. Lerea declined to share specifications related to horsepower and abrasive pressure.
The waterjet also comes with browser-based programming software that allows the maker or fabricator to create a part design easily and the resulting cutting path quickly. Users select the material from a library and input the material thickness, and the waterjet is ready for part production.