The unique cutting knife uses water as the blade to cut iron and gold

A magic knife has attracted many spectators at the fourth high-tech equipment exhibition for the recent military-civilian integration development.

This is a cutting knife with unique functions. It can cut all kinds of materials with the softest water.It can cut through rock, cut through steel, and separate sponges.This is LionstekLionstek co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as Lionstek) r & d production of five axis linkage intelligent water knife.

Five-axis intelligent water knife two-degree-of-freedom v-type swing head

"The five-axis and five-linkage smart water knife with independent intellectual property rights can be used for efficient processing of new materials in aerospace, national defense, military industry, rail transit and other fields, as well as for material cutting in special applications such as obsolete shells disassembly, inflammable and explosive."Shi mai technology, one of the main founders, overseas high-level talent introduction zhang shijin told science and technology daily reporters.

"Rou ke just" beats laser cutting

Water knife, as the name implies, is water to achieve cutting.How did this particularly soft substance, water, become a knife?Zhang shijin introduced that water knife is a new high energy beam processing technology after laser.In the early 1970s, water knife technology using high pressure water jet as cutting tool appeared in North America. In the 1980s, abrasive water knife technology was derived. In the 1990s, water knife technology was gradually popularized in Europe and America.

"Simply put, it is to pressurize ordinary tap water to more than 4,000 atmospheres, and then force the pressurized water to eject from a small nozzle to form a high-speed jet. In this high-speed jet, add some sharp broken particles like sand to form a high-speed abrasive jet."The high-pressure, high-speed jet of water cuts the object at three times the speed of sound, Mr. Zhang said, "in a similar way to the water gun that kids play with."

In the "predecessor" laser cutting halo, the rapid growth of water knife cutting has its own incomparable advantages."Water knife cutting process is a high speed grinding and fast cooling process, no thermal damage and thermal deformation, no smoke and dust, green environmental protection.""Mr. Zhang said.Laser cutting, by contrast, although the cutting speed faster, accuracy is not low, but in the cutting surface will lead to "burn", cut the joint will cause arc marks and cause thermal effect, at the same time, the technology is mostly used for sheet metal, parts of non-metallic material cutting, cutting is not ideal for some materials, such as aluminum, copper and other non-ferrous metals, alloys, especially for thicker sheet metal, can't even cut.

"The current research on high-power laser generators is trying to solve the problem of sheet metal cutting, but the equipment investment, maintenance and operation costs are also considerable.In contrast, water knife cutting investment is small, low operating cost, wide range of cutting materials, high efficiency, easy operation and maintenance.Zhang shijin said, simply say, laser can cut, water knife must be able to cut;Laser can not cut, water knife can cut.Because of this, since the emergence of intelligent water knife cutting technology in the late 1990s, its application in Europe and the United States has seen a rapid growth. At the beginning of this century, the media in the United States claimed that water knife has become a mainstream machining method.At present, high pressure intelligent water knife has been widely used in aerospace, automobile, locomotive, steel, paper, food, building materials art, various equipment processing workshop and other fields.Boeing and airbus have made extensive use of smart water knives for mechanical processing.

The "soft knife" control system fills the gap

China introduced water knife technology in the late 1990s."Most of them bought some parts and assembled them by themselves. Due to the lack of key technologies such as' soft knife 'control software, domestic water knives always stay in the price competition of low-end products."Mr. Zhang said that was one of the reasons he and his partner, Dr. Zeng jiyue, returned to China to develop smart water knives.

In 2013, zhang shijin and his partner zeng jiyue developed the first multi-axis intelligent water knife system in China."Water knives, laser and plasma cutting are all called 'soft knives'.Compared with 'hard knife' control technology, 'soft knife' control difficulty can be imagined.This is equivalent to using the brush to write as beautiful as the pen font, of course much more difficult.It is difficult to control a soft object precisely, and to control the 'soft knife' and achieve precise cutting requires a very unique, high-quality control system."Zhang shijin said that because of the difficulty, many domestic robots in the multi-axis linkage precision control technology is still controlled in the hands of foreign manufacturers, after three years of hard work, they developed this intelligent water knife system to overcome this problem.

The system completely put aside the traditional rigid tool for the control of target control concept, based on the characteristic of soft knife was used to jet from the injection point at the bottom of the workpiece as the control target, by adopting mathematical model accurately predict every bit of jet to walk the path error, realized with jet to walk every step of speed, acceleration, the cutting head and the Angle of deflection of the jet characteristic parameters of precise control, in the case of cutting efficiency maximization issued to automatically eliminate the purpose of these errors in order to obtain high accuracy.In order to avoid the dependence of the equipment on the operating experience of the operator, the system also establishes the intelligent database of material processing. With this database, the operator only needs to input the name and thickness of the workpiece material, and the intelligent system can automatically optimize the whole cutting process.

Smart water knife will play a role in many fields

"As a high-tech company, we are always working on new technologies."Zhang Shijin said, not long ago, the company developed a new software, which can realize complex 3 d graphics cutting path automatically generated graphics import, "used to cut a complex 3 d irregular patterns, such as aircraft engine as a whole page, the need for complex programming, now in our this software, as long as you want to give me the 3 d model of engine blade, cutting we can into a 3 d graphics, Mr Import this graphics can automatically generate the most optimal soon soft knife precision machining path."

In addition, for the car roof, trunk and other irregular shape without typical positioning features of the edge-cutting, shimen technology is also working on."We're going to cut this kind of object needs to be done before a complex set of jig grinding tool, is expected next year, our new technology comes out, can automatically generate the cutting path, no longer need to jig grinding tool, it will greatly save the production cost, improve the efficiency of processing, to meet the various customization demand is of great significance in the future.""Mr. Zhang said.

In zhang shijin's view, water knife is "universal cutting machine"."Will be widely used in metal processing, stone parquet, advertising decoration, creative design and other industries.Zhang Shijin said, especially in aerospace vehicles, national defense, ship manufacturing, equipment manufacturing, rail transit has huge potential in the mould manufacturing, "with the development of new materials, many traditional processing methods are difficult to machining materials, such as titanium alloy, high temperature alloy, composite material is widely used, for these materials processing, intelligent water knife is plays an irreplaceable role.As the world's factory, China's demand for smart water knives exceeds even that of Europe and the us.Once entering the international market, every machining workshop is a potential user of smart water knife, and there is immeasurable huge development space for smart water knife products." Editor: guo ke