Optimising abrasive waterjet cutting of ceramic materials

Compared with traditional mechanical cutting methods and most non-traditional machining technologies, abrasive water jet (AWJ) cutting technology is acquiring increasingly extensive applications for the shape cutting of difficult-to-machine materials such as ceramics. However, many aspects of this technology are still not well understood. Further, its low cutting speed needs to be increased without compromising the quality of the surface finish. In this paper, experimental techniques based on statistical design principles were conducted to study AWJ cutting of ceramics. The research work, involving multi-directional cutting, was conducted to examine the effect of jet impact angles on cutting quality. Furthermore, new cutting head oscillation techniques were applied of the AWJ cutting process for better cutting. (C) 1998 Published by Elsevier Science S.A.