History of ultrahigh pressure water jet

History of ultra-high pressure water knife

Dr. Norman Franz has long been recognized as the father of the ultra-high pressure water knife.He was the first person to study ultra-high pressure (UHP) water knife cutting tools.Ultra-high pressure is defined as more than 30,000 psi. Dr. Franz, a forestry engineer, wanted to find a new way to cut large trunks into wood.In 1950, Franz first placed heavy weights on the water column, chasing water through a small nozzle.He acquired a short high-pressure jet (which repeatedly exceeded the pressures used today) and was able to cut wood and other materials.His later studies involved more continuous flow of water, but he found it very difficult to obtain continuous high pressure.At the same time, the life of parts is also calculated in minutes, not weeks or months today.

Dr. Franz never made a mass-produced wood cutter.Today wood cutting is one of the least important applications of ultra-high pressure technology.But Dr. Franz demonstrated that high-speed converging water flow has tremendous cutting energy - an application that goes far beyond Dr. Franz's dream.

In 1979, Dr. Mohamed Hashish, working in the Philadelphia Laboratory, began working on ways to increase the cutting energy of an ultra-high pressure water knife in order to cut metals and other hard materials.

Dr. Hashish is recognized as the father of the sanding water knife. He invented the method of adding sand to the ordinary water knife.He used garnet, a material commonly used on sandpaper, as a sand.With this method, a water knife (containing sand) can cut almost any material.Sanded ice knives were first used to cut metal, glass and concrete in 1980.In 1983, the world's first commercial sanded water knife cutting system came out and was used to cut automobile glass.The first users of this technology were the aerospace industry, and they found that the water knife was an ideal tool for cutting stainless steel, titanium, and high-strength light-weight synthetic materials as well as carbon fiber composites for military aircraft (now used in civil aircraft).Since then, water knives have been adopted by many other industries, such as Ai processing plants, stone, tile, glass, jet engines, construction, nuclear industry, shipyards, and so on.