'7M'Advantage of Abrasive Waterjet for Machining Advanced Materials

Under the support of an SBIR Phase II/IIB grant from the National Science Foundation, OMAX has developed and commercialized micro abrasive (µAWJ), culminating A MicroMAX® JetMachining® Center technology for meso-micro machining. AWJ inherently possesses technological and manufacturing merits unmatched by most machine tools. With the commercialization of µAWJ technology, waterjet is now fully capable of multi-mode machining most materials from macro to micro scales (the 7M advantage). Novel accessories and software facilitate machining precision 2D and 3D parts with a wide range of part size and thickness. The versatile waterjet is particularly advantageous for machining difficult and delicate materials, such as alloys, hardened steel, composites, and laminates. One unique capability is machining composites and nanomaterials comprised of metals (reflective and conductive), non-metals (non-conductive), and anything in between. The 7M advantage of waterjet has been taking advantage by machining sample parts made of a variety of advanced materials that are difficult, or even impossible, to machine otherwise.