I caught sight of this through a bulk email I receive and once in a while they show some interesting stuff. This one is the best in quite some time.
It's a desktop waterjet cutter! I could imagine if I had a 3D printer it would be right along side of it! It's part of a Kickstarter campaign and sometimes these things don't reach fruition so have a look but don't commit. If you do, it's your own choice!
I agree Matt! I did 'warn' everyone of the possibility of this failing and I will sit along the sidelines for this too. Personally I can't justify a 3D printer either. I would like to see it succeed! I may have a need to cut some foam rubber and understand for my need it should be cut with a waterjet because I need perpendicular sides. I did my prototypes with steel rule dies and they were fine. The 1/2" thick ones showed significant concaving of the sides so I went to 1/4" thick and it was much improved. It's only for a looks like prototype anyway.
And it only cuts 3/16" steel at maximum thickness. I looked at it and was thinking about sending the link to the owner of our company to see what he thought, but now that I look at it, 3/16" isn't all that much. It is a very rare occurrence that we have steel that thin.
The times that we do, we have a shop right next door that we can hire with a laser cutter AND a water jet cutter.
Its a cool idea. Just not for our applications.
Well Dan you could 'sandwich' your materials to get to the thickness you need! LOL! Just kidding of course. More than anything I wanted to post that as some if not most of us have requirements to produce prototypes. I thought this could be a tool in that arsenal. I would love to put a Porsche 911 in my 'applications' right now! LOL! have a great holiday weekend!
Bernie Daraz wrote:
Well Dan you could 'sandwich' your materials to get to the thickness you need! LOL! Just kidding of course. More than anything I wanted to post that as some if not most of us have requirements to produce prototypes. I thought this could be a tool in that arsenal. I would love to put a Porsche 911 in my 'applications' right now! LOL! have a great holiday weekend!
Yeah, right! Some of the block of steel that we end up using are 6" thick! That's a lot of sandwiching!
You have a great weekend as well!!
As long as there's bacon I'd be fine with it! LOL! I have sandwiched 13 ga steel 'flat's to create a custom brake die for some custom parts until the tooling came in. We quoted a short turn around and we got the job as a result, the customer was happy to pay 'twice' for the tooling to get their parts quickly. The bend die was 10 inches wide. I did it for another part, light gauge steel. Mounting flats and a large radius about 1.25 inches. The guys couldn't believe it worked. Maybe I'll take some time and try to remember how I did it and mock it up in SW, it was back in the late 80's.
Hah! Late 80's I turned 10 in 1986. LOL I was sandwiching stuff too....although my sandwiches looked a lot more like Scooby Doo's than yours. LOL
Dan, You're likely better at SW than I am but I have more experience! LOL! My daughter was born in 1986!
Bernie Daraz wrote:
Dan, You're likely better at SW than I am
Bah, unlikely! I have learned a lot from you and the others here.
Some of us have different things in our arsenals, I enjoy sharing with my peers. I might make a small mistake here and there but I have good reason to. I would never be angry at someone that corrects me.
Bernie Daraz Wow - it's been a long time that I heard about metal sandwiches - In the late 80's (yep 19th century) we had a 6 head oxy/act torch and we would make a stack up to 1 7/8" thick and the top pc would have to be 3/16" thick. The top 3/16" plate which was a throw away pc, because of the melted edges..
We would shear rectangular or square blanks and punch a starter hole and also hold down or clamping bolts, which were placed in a profiled area etc, and there were also needed for line up purposes and we could only have a certain amount of distance between the clamping bolts etc.. We would clamp the exterior and run a very hot vertical down weld at about every 4 to 6 inches depending on the overall size. The process was used on anything that couldn't be straight cut and was considered a production pc, but now we would consider it a waste of time..
Thanks for reviving memory lane...
It was a Kickstarter campaign. It ran from 9/12/16 to 11/12/16. In those 60 day the Kickstarter campaign raised $1,331,936.00 in pledges, a little over 13 times more than their goal of $100,000.00. Original targeted ship date of 8/17 for the "early bird" units and 12/17 for the rest. It'll be interesting to see how things turn out for them.
Early birds were suppose to ship in two months. But according to their blog update revised ship-dates are;
EARLY BIRD – NOVEMBER 2017
BATCH 1 – FEBRUARY 2018
BATCH 2 – APRIL 2018
BATCH 3 - MAY 2018
Pre-orders placed today are expected to ship June 2018...
Cool concept except for the whole kick-starter thing.
That's the way of things now. Funding ideas without losing the IP to big investors.
Wasn't this project the inventors senior design project at University?
Bernie Daraz,
What a wonderful idea! Just perusing the site, it is tough to determine if this one is going to be a success, though... They want 6k for it. I know that is really cheap for a waterjet, but it isn't in the territory your average hobbyist will be able to afford. And with the cutting speeds being so slow, it really isn't for mass production. If they offer a scaled down version for 1/3 of the cost (which may not be technically possible), I'm almost certain they'd make a lot of money.