High Pressure Water Jet Cutting of the Al 6061 T651 Aluminum Alloy

Abstract

Water jet cutting is an unconventional technology used for materials processing. It is known to be one of the most versatile and rapid cutting methods that can be applied to process a greater variety of materials such: metallic materials, non-metallic materials, stone, glass etc. By comparing with the classical technologies, the water jet cutting presents the following advantages: very low side forces during the machining; it is rapid; it is silent; no thermal distortion, high flexibility and has a good cutting accuracy and minimal burrs. In this paper the influence of the high pressures on the surface quality of the workpieces processed by water jet abrasive cutting is presented. The studied parameters were as follows: width of the processed surface at the jet inlet (Li), width of the processed surface at the jet outlet (Lo), deviation from perpendicularity (u), inclination angle (α) and roughness (Ra).