3 Ways ROCTEC™ Helps You Cut More Efficiently

Kennametal’s product is the last thing that customer’s abrasive jet stream touches before hitting the workpiece, so it is very critical. Abrasive waterjet cutting is used on a variety of workpiece materials, so customers need a versatile product offering that can be adapted for numerous materials. Some of the primary materials that ROCTEC customers are cutting include metals, composites, ceramics, exotic alloys, and even stone.  In addition to the different materials, there are many varying machine settings for the process including pump pressures, abrasive feed rates, cutting head configurations and many more. ROCTEC provides a premium high-performance offering to address the varying cutting operations in practice today.

Many cutting applications require lengthy programs, consistent edge quality, and achievement of key tolerances from piece to piece or even across multiple cutting heads simultaneously. Some of these factors can be compensated for by high-tech software, but the simplest way to ensure your cutting needs are met is to use an abrasive waterjet nozzle with the most consistent level of operational performance in the industry such as the ROCTEC™ APX. The ROC™ consolidation process provides material consistency from piece to piece allowing cuts to be uniform from workpiece to workpiece. Some of our end users utilize multiple head machines, and they realize the benefits from the consistency of our products. ROCTEC provides customers with both consistent bore growth and cut quality whether they are running one machine with one head or numerous machines with multiple heads.

As garnet particles are jetted through the focusing tube by the high-velocity water stream, these particles degrade the nozzle bore by initially removing the soft metal binder material, which exposes and ultimately abrades the tungsten carbide material. ROCTEC better resists wear because the nozzles do not have the soft binders and the resulting tungsten carbide grains from the ROC process are extra-fine, which results in an extremely hard material (2800 – 2900 HV). ROCTEC nozzles simply withstand this erosive and abrasive environment much longer.  In comparison, focusing tubes made from traditional tungsten carbides or even high-quality materials made without the proprietary ROC process are much more susceptible to this abrasive process. While there are other factors that affect the wear in focusing tubes – such as pump pressure, variations in garnet, abrasive feed rates, water quality and more – ROCTEC provides superior wear resistance against all these factors.