Abrasive Waterjet Handles Variety of Specialty Tasks

More difficult applications are made for this technology

Glass Digest - June 15, 1989

by Stephen J. Henry

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The enormous power of the abrasive waterjet, once simply a subject of research and experimentation in the glass industry, has now been harnessed, operating under computer control.

This technology, which has the capability to make even intricate cuts with accuracy and repeatability on a production basis, is now in use in a variety of applications worldwide.

The abrasive waterjet process meets a wide range of needs from job-shop work to computer integrated manufacturing environments and provides to industry several distinct advantages. Besides accuracy and repeatability, these include the ability to make cuts previously considered impossible; to cut glass with a safe-to-handle ground edge, unlike the sharp edge left by scoring and breaking; to eliminate grinding steps; to perform tasks previously requiring many work stations at one work station; to reduce handling, scrap, and breakage; to optimize material through nesting; and to virtually eliminate changeover and set-up downtime between parts, as the patterns are stored electronically in computer memory.

Products produced

Examples of products this process has produced in the U.S., Japan, and Europe include glass stove tops and oven control panels, side windows and mirrors for automobiles, notched glass doors, glass tabletops, security glass, and architectural glass.

The high-pressure waterjet technology has been in use since the 1960s for cutting soft materials such as diapers, food products, and cardboard. When abrasive systems reached the prototype stage in the early 1980s, knowledge gained from my company's experience with a computer-controlled industrial laser was applied to the development of an automated abrasive waterjet system for cutting glass.

Yet even after the successful application of this technology to general glass cutting, certain types of glass materials were still viewed as being particularly difficult to cut. The use of the abrasive waterjet for cutting these "work-resistant" glass materials has, however, evolved quite rapidly.

My company has been doing waterjet contract cutting for four years. During this time, we have done an enormous amount of experimentation in order to gain the knowledge needed to be able to apply the abrasive waterjet technology to cutting thick glass, borosilicates, polycarbonate glass laminates, wire glass, chemically strengthened glass, and such varied items as parts for CAT scan machines and tank windows.

Some of the most recent and most exciting of such applications have involved the cutting of chemically strengthened glass. Many laminators have had difficulty in cutting notches and drilling holes in chem-strengthened glass, especially when it is laminated with layers of polycarbonate for bullet- and forced-entry resistant products.

Experiments

During the past year, my company has performed extensive experiments with ways to employ the waterjet process with chem-strengthened, glass-clad polycarbonate laminates. In January, we finished developing a series of techniques designed to make these types of cuts both routine and cost effective.

This development is significant not just because holes and notches can now be cut inexpensively from this type of glass with a very low risk of breakage but also because it provides an opportunity to maximize the throughput of the laminating process.

The ability to use the waterjet to cut laminated parts to size from large sheets can make a substantial difference in reducing autoclave cycles.

Continued