At Jernbro’s workshop in Åby, outside Norrköping, another water cutting machine has been installed. It’s
a strong complement to the existing one. Both machines are going at full speed and sometimes even at night.
− The new machine, which is specially built for Jernbro, has double cutting nozzles and a cutting table of 4×2 meters. This means that the cutting time is twice as fast and that larger formats can be cut, compared to our older machine, says Tommy Danlycke, the CNC operator who is responsible for both machines.
With a CNC-controlled water cutting machine, details are cut with cutting sand and water, where the water has a pressure of as much as 3700 Bar. This is called abrasive water cutting. The processing is cold and since no heat curing is needed, cut holes can be threaded directly, for example. In addition, the new machine produces minimal waste because the pieces to be cut can be only a few millimeters apart.
− We can cut almost all materials, such as steel, copper, tiles, clinker, rubber, ordinary glass and laminated glass. The machine can cut sheets that are as thin as half a millimeter and up to a thickness of 150-200 mm. The finished products get a smooth cut surface. In terms of size, the machine can handle anything from a few millimeters and up to 2 meters. This is what’s so cool about water cutting, that we can really cut everything in varying complexity and size, such as pipe flanges, presses, joint plates, rubber gaskets, details for floor hatches, but also advanced signs with squiggly logos, Tommy continues.
With the versatility, there are also artists, knife makers, tilers and glaziers among the customers, in addition to the industry and the automotive industry. A large part is also manufactured as details for projects that other departments at Jernbro work on.
Before the machine can start working, Tommy needs to do drawing and cutting programs. Then the machine runs according to these, and depending on what it is to be processed, can take anywhere between 2 minutes and 20 hours.
− The new machine can also run unmanned at night using an online system. This makes the work efficient when we have assignments that require many hours in the water cutting machine. Should problems arise, the machine alerts me via text message, says Tommy with a smile.
The cutting sand used is recycled. As it breaks down once more during recycling, it becomes sharper and finer. The sand is a special one and is extracted from mines around the world.
− It feels good, environmentally speaking, that we use recycled cutting sand as well as send it back when used to the supplier, who recycles it again, Tommy concludes.
Picture 1-3 shows examples of details that have been cut. Figure 4 is the water cutting machine.
