As we know, waterjets cut via a supersonic stream. Although there are hand held waterjets used to remove paint, most waterjets are typically moved around with some type of motion equipment.

Waterjets are rather easy to plumb to a machine using elbows, T’s, and other fittings common, in concept, to plumbing a house. Rather than using PVC pipe, we use stainless steel lines of 1/4″ to 9/16″ outside diameter and stainless steel fittings. And motion can be obtained by swivel joints or simply by making the stainless steel line long enough to allow for flexing within the elastic deformation range. Backthrust on the machine is rather small (under 20 pounds [9 kg] for most waterjet applications) even though we are pressurizing the water to very high levels (up to 94,000 psi, or 6480 bar) because not very much water is used (approximately 1 gallon per minute).

Here is a high level overview of the motion equipment that moves around the waterjets.