How to Make Almost* Anything | MAS.863

Ella Peinovich | M.Arch Level III, MIT

[04_water jet]

Tests for Delicate Metal Lace

This week I prepared and cut a test piece on the OMAX waterjet machine. It is a very powerful machine, advertising clearly that it will obliterate ANY object put in the stream when cutting. Therefore I thought to try and cut something very delicate, in interpretation of lace, to see just how tight and precise it could cut.

After generating the cut path from a PNG file within the OMAX software I was also able to view the cut away in red and tool path with lead-ins in green. Looks good!

The video embedded here is a quick compilation showing the understated milling process; the bubbles a gentle reminder of the 40 ksi water jet stream cutting through aluminum sheet metal.

The cut was rather precise, however as you can see from the mangled pieces my clamping skills leave something to be desired. It seems as though the sheet metal lifted as the tool was passing over and was caught in multiple places. On to creating the actual wearable pieces.