Water or laser ?

[Vulnavia]

Have had brackets cut by both over the years. Was wondering why you would use one or the other.

Thanks,
Will

[Bardahl77]

Water cutting can work with thicker materials than the laser, but it's much messier in having to clean up the tools. I worked for a semiconductor company that used water cutters to separate chip wafers, and the slurry left over was a disposal issue.

Laser cutting is quieter and more precise. From a customer standpoint, it probably depends on the material and thickness and how precise the cuts have to be.

[HazelNut]

I have a 4x4 CNC plasma table in my shop that I built. It's great and I've used it for a ton of stuff. It does however leave some dross on parts that needs to get cleaned up. I'm still tuning the machine in and need to finish the fab on the water table and automation on the torch height controller which should reduce the dross a bunch. It's really no big deal and doesn't affect the part's quality/accuracy, just ads another step to parts prep. My plasma cutter can supposedly cut aluminum but I've yet to try that. I stick with steel. I'm sure I'll mess with AL at some point on it!

I've also had parts cut on real deal production shop laser cutters and they're quite good. high quality cuts on much thicker material than what I can do on my machine. no dross. check out sendcutsend.com they've been great. Upload drawings, verify shape/dims on their online tool, pick material, place order, and they send it in a few days. They can also do CNC routing on a bunch of different materials, but I haven't used them for CNC yet.

I also use a local water jet shop for some things. This seems to be the highest cut quality and the thickest material. The local shop I use can basically cut armor plate with their giant machine. They're also great BUT there is always a lead time with them and small jobs like mine get wedged between big jobs and there is always a little back and forth verifying drawings before a cut. Because of that I built a plasma table so I can cut my own stuff right away and if my drawing needs a change I can make a change and recut in minutes vs days.

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