JETCUT SWITCHES TO ACCUSTREAM DIALINE
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JetCut, one of Scotland’s most well-known waterjet cutting sub-contractors, provides its services to a wide range of engineering and non-engineering industries. They all benefit from Jetcut’s expertise in the high accuracy and high quality processing of a wide variety of metals, tiles & glass, natural materials, rubbers, plastics and foam – all at a highly competitive cost. Essential to the service provided by JetCut is the reliability and dependability of the waterjet process and on recommendation from Wightman Stewart the company is now benefiting from the performance of Accustream Dialine cutting heads. These have been retrofitted to the company’s Calypso waterjet cutting table to maximise the potential of this original investment. JetCut can cut with abrasive waterjet any metallic material including tool steel, aluminium, steel, copper and exotic materials with 0.5 mm to 150 mm thicknesses to a tolerance of +/- 0.2mm. The company has the capacity to cut from sheets up to 3m by 1.5m on the Calypso table. The benefits of water jet process include minimal kerf widths of typically 0.8 mm, no heat affected zone and higher speeds than conventional cutting methods on thicker metals. Particularly for customers such as tile suppliers, artists and architectural customers, the attraction of abrasive waterjet is the ability to create perfect curves, complex joints and seamless combinations of materials. JetCut produces prototype parts in order to optimise a design and can also provide mass production services using waterjet. Exotic and expensive materials that might otherwise be quite difficult to machine, such as hardened tool steel, stainless steel or titanium are well suited to abrasive waterjet cutting.For JetCut, the performance of the cutting head is crucial as it affects the speed and quality of the waterjet cut. On Wightman Stewart’s advice the company has switched from diamond embedded cutting heads to Accustream Dialine cutting heads with a replaceable diamond. Not only was the comparative up-front cost of the Dialine head attractive, but also the original diamond embedded heads were proving expensive to run as every time the diamond failed, the whole head had to be changed.
Indeed, for JetCut the best feature of the Dialine is the diamond interchangeable orifice. Its use reduces downtime and on-going costs spares and consumables costs have also been reduced by sourcing them from Wightman Stewart. Using two Dialine cutting heads as well as nesting software allows the cost of cut parts to be significantly reduced.
The interchangeable orifices also give the company the chance to fine tune settings so that they can get the most out of their 60HP waterjet intensifier too in terms of accurate abrasive flow to ensure the optimum cutting set-up. Wightman Stewart also services and supplies all the spare parts for the intensifier on favourable terms to JetCut.
“Quality of cut and turnaround is vital for JetCut and the cutting head is crucial to our performance,” says Mike Marshall of JetCut. “In terms of service, both Wightman Stewart and AccuStream are very knowledgeable and helpful. They have given good advice about improving waterjet performance even further.” Wightman Stewart provides JetCut with a full range of support services with its fully trained engineers and 24 hour response. |
