15. Wild Card Week¶
Individual Assignment¶
Design and produce something with a digital fabrication process (incorporating computer-aided design and manufacturing) not covered in another assignment, documenting the requirements that your assignment meets, and including everything necessary to reproduce it.
OMAX 5555 Abrasive Water Jet¶
For this weeks assignment we are supposed to produce something with a digital fabrication process incorporating CAD and manufacturing using a new machine that we havent used in our previous assignments. First I thought of using the handibot but it wasn’t functioning well as it had errors and we didnt have other machines which needed CAD designs but instead were manually run.
So since the JNW Super Fab Lab in DHI was recently opened up out here in Thimphu, Bhutan, I thought of paying a visit and exploring about all the new machines that they might be having and went there and found the OMAX water jet 5555 very tempting to use as it cut etch and cut almost anything except for diamonds with the use of abrasive. So to start with, the lab was doing some metal engraving for the Forest department and I asked them if they could let me design and let me etch one metal sheet with the supervision of the expert present and to my delight they let me.
Standard Features¶
- Backed by OMAX’s exclusive IntelliMAX Premium Software
- Pre-loaded linear bearings and precision ball screws
- Standard programmable Motorized Z-Axis with a precision OMAX MAXJET 5i Nozzle boosts productivity and process efficiency
- Standard scissor-style hard plumbing adds another level of safety by using contained high-pressure components, as well as contributes to a - - Smaller footprint, lower maintenance, and higher reliability
- Standard Rapid Water Level Control for cleaner, safer, and quieter submerged cutting completes most work below 80 dBA
Abrasive Jet Machining¶
Abrasive jet machining is the process of impinging the high-speed stream of abrasive particles by high-pressure gas or air on the work surface through a nozzle and metal removal occurs due to erosion caused by high-speed abrasive particles. Because of repeated impacts small bits of material get loosened which is carried away by jet and exposing the fresh surface to the jet.
Abrasive Jet Machining Parts or Construction:¶
Abrasive Jet machining Consists of several Parts like:
- Gas Supply
- Filter
- Pressure Gauge
- Regulator
- Mixing chamber
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Nozzle
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Gas Supply: Gas is supply to the system for the operation. Here we also use compressed air instead of other gas.
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Filter: Filter indicates the cleanness of the fuel supply.Here the work is to clean the fuel if there are any dust particles present.
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Pressure Gauge: This device will check the required amount of pressure is there or not. Normally this device work is to check the pressure.
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Regulator: The regulator as the name indicates it controlling the flow. It controls the compressed air flowing through the pipe.
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Mixing Chamber: Here we supply the abrasive particles and there already the amount of compressed air comes from the pipe. Both will get a mix that’s why this is called a Mixing chamber.
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Nozzle: This is made up of hard material. The diameter of the nozzle is about 0.18 to 0.8 mm.
Working Principle of Abrasive Jet Machining:¶
The figure shown is the above Abrasive jet Machining.
To learn more about Abrasive jet machining you can refer this website
Designing¶
Softwares used¶
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OMAX LAYOUT software LAYOUT is a OMAX innovative CAD software that creates tool paths for your OMAX produced abrasive waterjet system. LAYOUT includes all the basic commands you’d expect to find in a CAD package, as well as a whole suite of tools specific to abrasive waterjet and waterjet machining, including cut quality specification, tool path fonts, gear and rack generation, and a lot more.
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ORD MAKE PREMIUM software It is the software used to control and to pass commands to machine to start cutting.
Process¶
First open the LAYOUT software to write the texts for the Forest department and it included some texts to be written in our national language that is ‘Dzongkha’ too. I gave the cut quality specifications and edited the tool path fonts and started generating the tool path for the machine.
You can see the Texts in the following image;
You have to save the file in .dxf format and next up click on ‘autopath’ to specify the start and end point of etching and to generate the toolpath, and once done click on the ‘go’ button as shown below;
There are 7 axis controls namely x-, x+, y-, y+, z, tx and ty where ‘t’ is for tilting. After zeroing begin etching.
The etching of the metal sheet video;
The product;
