In any business, having up to date tools is vital for many reasons. When you are in a “middle business” such as manufacturing, or food preperation for a supermarket, or any business where you have other departments or companies’ dependant on you delivering to a specfic “spec” on a deadline, then those reasons intensify. The considerations of cost and reliability are obvious, but it is also worth remembering that there are other considerations such as environmental impact and wastage that could affect your profit margins. The technologies for cutting tools have improved dramatically over the recent years, but the single biggest advance in recent years has been the development of water jet cutting tools.
Water jet cutting tools are more accurate, more versatile, more economically friendly and can greatly reduce your wastage as there is not the traditional “heat affected zone” that is associated with blade, laser or other tools. Also because of the quality of the cut given by a water jet machine it has removed much of the need for secondary machining to remove “burrs” and other imperfections.
This means that water jets are great for cutting a wide variety of materials from food stuffs, right the way through the range to very hard materials like Granite and Titanium. They are also superb for cutting certain brittle materials that could shatter under traditional cutting techniques, such as glass and some ceramics or making very intricate cuts that aren’t always possible by other methods.
Although there are many companies on the Internet that sell and maintain water jet cutting machines, it is important to find one who has a reputation for reliability and good customer service.