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Week 16. Wildcard Week

Task for the Week:

  • Design and produce something with a digital process not covered in another assignment, documenting the requirements that your assignment meets, and including everything necessary to reproduce it. Possibilities include but are not limited to.

For the wild card week, I had decided to use Water jet cutter, which is one of my favourite machine among all other CNC machines due to its versatility and capabilities to perform toughest job with its high precision and accuracy. It can cut any kind of materials starting from foam to stainless steel with the tolerance of 25 microns. The only thing it can’t cut is diamond being the hardest substance. It has got the bed size as 4 feet by 4 feet which means we can cut any material with dimension upto 4 feet by 4 feet with high pressure pump delivering pressure of 45000 t0 62000 psi.

For more details and informations you can directly go to this site

Work Flow to start the machine

  1. First ensure that the power supply to the machine are provided, so for that put on the main power switch which lies at the back of the machine

  1. Put on the stabiliser and wait for few seconds

  1. Next go for putting on the chiller which plays a crucial role in maintaining the temperature of water during cutting operation

  1. After that put on the power supply for the electrical cabinet

  1. Followed by that just press on the green button on the side of electrical cabinet chamber and also rotate the hp pump control switch anticlockwise to put on the hp pump

  1. Put on the switch for the monitor and start doing calibration of machine

Steps of doing calibration

There are few things to remember while we start doing calibration of machine. First thing as soon as the machine gets started we should move the nozzle of machine towards the origin of machine where both X and Y values are zero and while moving the nozzle the Z axis should be lifted up so that it won’t hit any material on the cutting bed while we perform the move operation. It is because if we hit the material there are chances that the tip of nozzle may break down.

For the calibration we need to move machine in X Y and Z direction so for that we use some of the designated keys from the key board

  1. Auto homing machine

This is the first step for the calibration where we do homing for the machine and it is necessary to perform this operation every after we puts on the machine after we shut down it. It will just initialise the initial position of machine and also to show to machine the X and Y co-ordinates of machine. To do this step follow the step on monitor as; Homes > Auto home XY > Begin homing by keeping the z axis value to zero

As soon as we click on begin homing, the process begins

  1. Auto-Home Tilt(Off Hardstop)

Secondly we usually perform this calibration to ensure the cutting head’s tilt mechanism is accurately aligned and function correctly. To do that follow the step on the monitor as; Homes > Auto-Home Tilt(Off Hardstop)

  1. Z axis calibration

Thirdly we do Z axis calibration and for that we keep Z axis measuring plate on the job piece and we ensure that the distance between the tip of nozzle and job piece is around 1.5 mm

  1. Setting up X Y co-ordinates

finally we are require to set up the X Y co-ordinates so that the machine can identify from where to start the cutting operation. So for that we just move the machine and set our co -ordiantes and and the same time we also need to enter it in the system make XY co-ordiantes to zero

Software Interface

We are provided with two softwares to run omax 5555 water jet cutter machine. First one is omax layout which provides us to do editting and do basic designing works and also to generate tool path for the drawing. Second one is omax make which provides us the previlage to move and operate the machine as per our convenient and aslo to select the material type as per our job piece.

Designing using fusion 360

So in order to cut my design using water jet, I had designed using fusion 360 and for the design I had decided to make our lab’s logo

I opened the fusion 360 and created rectangular sketch of dimension 70mm by 70mm

After that I had drawn traingle by dividing the rectangle equally and had also drawn the three circle of diameter 30 mm on either side and by offsetting the side of triangle at 25 mm on three sides

Next I tried modifying my design to look similar like our lab’s logo so for that, I just did offsetting of each part at a distance of 3mm each

After I completed sketching my design, I just ended sketch mode and extruded my design

Finally my design came out like this and I exported in dxf file and went for cutting operation

Importing file in the machine for cutting

  • Go to File > Import from other CAD

  • Select the DXF file and click on “OK”

  • Select on the design and right click on “Selected option” > choose the quality 1 and design will change into red colour which means cutting

  • Click on autopath to generate the tool path

  • Before we send our design to omax make for cutting we need to save our design first

Steps to save file

  • Go to post represented by arrow symbol. Left click on it and select on the starting point and save it

  • Again go to post, right click on it open ORD path in Make, you will be taken to ORD make page. Select the material from the list and click on Ok

  • Left click on Begin Machining, Start machining, machine will start cutting

  • We can even perform dry run test and go to spot on test so for that just right click on Begin machining and select the options to carryout the different operations available

Design file for the week is attached here

Enjoy learning!