Wildcard Week

I chose to use the waterjet to make my part (was going to use the EDM but there were some technical difficulties)

I plan to make an oarlock for my rowing system. It will be made of aluminum and it’ll hold and oar made of steel pipe.

I made it fairly thick on the edges so it could withstand a lot of applied force.

The waterjet was super cool to watch- really big machine:

Alfonso helped me find a large 1” thick piece of aluminum to cut my piece.

The water jet fills with water to submerge the material and presses a cap like object on the material to cut.

We filled the machine with a sand like material which is mixed with the water to cut through the metal.

We made the toolpath for the oarlock and had to reload a few times because the toolpath was cutting on the inside of my material for some reason the first time around but it was fine when we reloaded.

Then we began to cut and the machine took around 8 minutes to do the whole thing. It’s 8” by 12”.

The oarlock came out great- here’s a picture of what the cut looks like- you can tell it uses sand because it looks very sandblasted and textured:

Here’s the final piece which I’ll eventually integrate into my final system.