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Best sacrificial material for waterjet: polished sheet metal

7challen7

Plastic
Joined
Feb 11, 2022
I am trying to figure out the best sacrificial material to use on the waterjet for a sheet of double mirrored stainless steel (.125''). Typically I only use foam as my backing material, and then only for very delicate work like glass and acrylic, so I'm wondering what people typically use to avoid splashback and edge frosting on polished metal. I've heard of rhinoboard and jetbrick, which are products designed for this purpose, but I'm not sure if they are worth the money, and if maybe I can get a similar result from something lying around the shop. Will ply warp too much?
 
I don't think there is any consensus other than using something inexpensive if it's for production. That's why hardyboard or other fiber board materials in the 1/8" range or less seem to be popular. If it's a one off, with 1/8" stainless I think you'd be fine with 1/8" ply if it was reasonably flat. Kustomizer do you mean that quasi-corrugated sign board material like Coroplast? I'm pretty sure I've used polycarbonate as thin as .02" and it was fine for back splash albeit not supportive. That's probably around the thickness of each side of coroplast. It doesn't take much.
 
I don't think there is any consensus other than using something inexpensive if it's for production. That's why hardyboard or other fiber board materials in the 1/8" range or less seem to be popular. If it's a one off, with 1/8" stainless I think you'd be fine with 1/8" ply if it was reasonably flat. Kustomizer do you mean that quasi-corrugated sign board material like Coroplast? I'm pretty sure I've used polycarbonate as thin as .02" and it was fine for back splash albeit not supportive. That's probably around the thickness of each side of coroplast. It doesn't take much.

Coroplast, that's the stuff, I got a bunch of one sided 4x8 sheets from the Sherriff after the election. They have to go take them down and do something with them so he brought me a dozen and I chopped them up in my sheet metal shear.
 
Kustomizer has a water jet up there in Id-a-ho ?
I must have missed that in the mooooving thread....:d

We do, it is called a Proto max, We bought it about 5 years ago, it is only a 12" x 12" but it does what we need. We mostly cut 1/8" mirror glass as we had as much as an 80% rejection rate from outside vendors for chipping on some but mostly scratching from poor handling after cutting. I did just use it to cut discs for oil pressure gauges and was impressed with the accuracy of the holes it cut, a .157 pin fit easy and a .158 wouldn't go for a run of 53 pcs, it don't seem possible by throwing a bit of red sand in a water stream but it does it. Except the one part where I somehow got a kink in the sand hose.
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ProtoMAX Abrasive Waterjet - OMAX Waterjet

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