• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.83-88
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• 2016

Because of the increasing tool cost for cutting hard-to-cut materials, abrasive water jet (AWJ) milling recently has been regarded as a potential alternative machining method. However, it is difficult to control the depth and width of cut in AWJ milling because they vary depending on many AWJ cutting parameters. On 27 conditions within a limited range of pressure, feed rate, and abrasive flow rate, AWJ cutting was conducted on titanium, and depth profiles were measured with a laser sensor. From the depth profile data, depth and width of cut were acquired at each condition. The relationships between depth and parameters and between width and parameters were derived through regression analysis. The former can provide proper cutting conditions and the latter the proper pick feed necessary to generate a milled surface. It is verified that pressure mostly affects depth, whereas abrasive flow rate mostly affects width.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.118-123
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• 2016

Overlap cutting is a fundamental method of applying abrasive water jet (AWJ) machining to milling to produce a wider surface because the nozzle outlet is approximately 1.0 mm wide. In this study, the effects of overlap cutting on the depth profile and surface roughness are investigated. The overlapping area depends on the amount of step over, which is controlled in the pick-feed direction. If the step over is equal to or larger than the diameter of the nozzle, no overlap cut occurs but large cusps remain between the cut paths. A step over as small as one-thirds of the nozzle diameter may lead to triple-overlap cutting resulting in an extraordinary depth. By using pocket milling experiments with a step over of 0.46 (or 0.47), it is verified that AWJ can produce a milled surface of titanium, one of the hard-to-cut materials, with $76{\mu}m$ Ra.