CAD/CAM System
A powerful and user-friendly CAD/CAM system enables us to produce one or more cut parts easily, quickly and precisely from defined contours. From the CAD drawing we are able to produce a nesting drawing against the material sheet, ensuring optimum yield. The nesting drawing is fed straight into the cutting machine. In addition, customer’s specific parts may be kept on file to be quickly recalled for future production.
Drawings
We are able to produce water-jet cutting programs from customers’ dimensional drawings or sketches, by digitising templates, or directly from imported DXF, DWG & IGES files all of which may be sent as email attachments. If a fast response is required, drawing files should be emailed as attachments to sales@westcut-engineering.co.uk; sketch drawings may be faxed to 01225 793694.
Nesting
The CAD drawing allows us to produce automatic sheet nesting of the same, or a number of dissimilar components, providing the optimum sheet utilisation possible and therefore the most economical piece part cost.
Material Supply
Materials may be supplied free issue or purchased by Westcut on behalf of customers.
Packing and Nationwide Delivery
Completed orders may be bubble wrapped, boxed, crated or palletised, as required, for nationwide delivery.
Turnaround Time for Orders
Turnaround time for orders placed is typically 3 – 4 days from receipt of material. Tighter turnaround times may be possible, often within 24 hours, if required.
Cutting of Laminates & Other Composite Materials
Using a CNC-controlled drill spindle, expensive bonded fibre laminates and other composite materials may be drilled—without delamination.
Abrasive Water-Jet Cutting
Harder materials, such as aluminium, titanium, stainless steel, ceramics, laminates and kevlars, are cut by introducing a garnet sand, a sharp mineral, into the water stream. The cutting sand is precisely fed without the use of pressure by a CNC-controlled sand feeder. This allows water-jet profiling of almost any material, without heat stressing or deforming the material.
Operating Terminal/Control
Parameters such as the cutting speed, the pressure and the amount of garnet sand can be infinitely adjusted to the material to be cut. Trial runs of cutting customer materials are commonly performed to maximise the efficiency and effectiveness of component production.
Finishing Processes
Westcut can provide finishing, tumble de-burring and belt sanding finishing for water cut components.
The water jet cutting production process is employed worldwide in many industry sectors and applications, a small selection of which is listed below.
Waterjet cutting often complements other technologies such as milling, laser cutting, plasma cutting, electrical discharge machining (EDM) and routing. Laser cutting and precision engineering companies often use water jet cutting services as a complement to their services.
Industry Sectors:
- Aircraft and spacecraft—including composite products
- Architectural
- Arms and defence
- Automobile and automobile supplies—including carbon fibre products
- Construction
- Electronics industry
- Marine and shipbuilding
- Medical Engineering
- Packaging and paper industry
- Sign makers
Applications:
- Interior decoration, including inlay patterns cut into tiles, such as logos
and lettering
- Machine and apparatus engineering
- Precision Engineering
- Public art and sculpture
Our water-jet cutting capability provides architects, artists, sculptors and interior designers with great freedom in the choice of materials and design.
Marble, stone and clay, ceramic and porcelain tiles, which have previously been restricted in their use by the difficulties of cutting complex shapes, can now be easily incorporated into detailed designs.
Stencil cutting and inlaying techniques can also be employed for artistic displays, sculpture, sign work, flooring and many other surface coverings.
