Bit Tooth Energy

The structure of the jet flow from an orifice makes a tremendous difference to the ability that the jet then has in terms both of its range and its cutting ability. And one of the major factors that control the structure of the jet lies in the flow conditions just upstream of the orifice itself. From time to time, over the decades, we would go out and buy every nozzle that was available for a certain purpose, and run tests between them, trying to find which would, under otherwise similar conditions, provide the best performance. Rarely did the most expensive nozzle give the best result. And the performance of even the best nozzle was also controlled by the flow channel upstream of that nozzle. This, in turn, controlled the condition of the water entering the nozzle. To illustrate the point let me use the example of some tests we made with fan-jet nozzles. In this particular case to objective was to clean large surfaces, but the generalized conclusion also holds true of nozzles of different shapes and jets up to even the highest of pressures used (and we have gone up to 10 million psi).

Simple cleaning nozzles, of the sort that are used in most pressure washers, have historically produced fan-jets that spread in one plane away from the orifice. There are a large variety of these on the market, of varying flow rate and geometry, and it was an initial challenge to find a simple way of relatively ranking the jet quality. Our initial answer, for the first cut, was to take blocks of polystyrene foam and traverse these at a fixed speed under the jet at different pressures and distances from the nozzle. This foam is very easily cut by a jet. So the tests were carried out at 1,000 psi and 2,000 psi, which is the range of pressures of the electrically powered pressure washers found in most hardware stores these days. The difference between two nozzles that were nominally supposed to achieve the same performance was striking:


Figure 1. Comparison of performance between a “better” fan nozzle (top) and a “poor” one (lower sample) when cutting polystyrene packing foam at low pressures.

As you may note at 1,000 psi the poor design was barely able to remove the surface of the polystyrene, rather than cutting deeply into it, as was the case with most of the nozzles tested, and as exemplified in the top cuts.

My point today however, is not the inherent faults in the design of the nozzle shape itself, but rather to highlight the problems that the particular design had, as a result of the way that water was fed into the orifice.

For in this case, unlike many of the conventional nozzles, where the flow is directed directly at the orifice down a channel aligned with the orifice, the nozzle were small discs arrayed along a spray bar, of the type that is used for car and truck washing rigs where a single channel feeds a number of sprays.

The flow in this case is primarily along the distribution manifold, and, as such, perpendicular to the axis of the resulting jets. When the water, therefore, exits from the individual nozzles it retains a component of this lateral velocity, and this tears the jet apart relatively close to the nozzle. The results are evident in the cut made in the lower half of Figure 1.

It is surprisingly easy to remedy this. A short tube inserted behind the nozzle orifice, and protruding up into the manifold channel allows the water some chance to collimate in the direction of flow before it accelerates through the nozzle orifice, and the result, relative to the original cut is quite significantly better.

Not that short lengths of tube are completely effective, but they are a start. One of the more effective means of getting a water jet to move as a cylinder in short jets (such as those seen at Disneyworld and at Detroit Airport is to run the water from the supply pump through a small stabilizing chamber and then pass it into a collimating tube full of drinking straws (or their technical equivalent) which sit just behind the nozzle. Providing the geometries are properly selected you can get the very smooth cylinders of water that are a feature of the jumping streams.

A similar structure lies upstream of the the nozzle at the Gateway Geyser across the river from the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. The fountain shoots a jet of water to the same height (630 ft) as the Gateway Arch on the other side of the river, and to quote Wikipedia:

the Gateway Geyser was designed and constructed by St. Louis–based Hydro Dramatics. It was completed in 1995 at a cost of $4 million. Three 800-horsepower (600 kW) pumps power the fountain, discharging 8,000 U.S. gallons of water per minute (50 L/s) at a speed of 250 feet (76 m) per second. The fountain has an axial thrust of 103,000 pounds-force (460 kN); water is jetted out of the 6-foot (1.8 m)-tall aerated nozzle at a pressure of 550 pounds per square inch (3.8 MPa).

These are more complex flow straighteners than the simpler ones that are used in low pressure cleaning systems, and with considerable effect in controlling the jet flows from the monitors of hydraulic mining equipment. By channeling the water into a multitude (perhaps 200) small diameter channels and then recombining the water at the nozzle the resulting flow is laminar.

Where the water flow is much lower, such as when being used in an ultra-high pressure system, the flow can be stabilized by allowing a long straight run-up of the pipe leading into the nozzle. (Typically the rule of thumb was that the length should be around 125 pipe diameters, however work at the U.S. Bureau of Mines showed that the length of straight section did not need to be this long – a length of around 4-inches proved effective.)

Figure 2. The improvement in jet performance with a straight inlet section (after Kovsec et al*)

A similar improvement can also be seen when the flow conditions are correct when working with higher pressure jets.

As a general rule, however, such care is not taken in the construction and lead-in to the nozzles, and the jet will begin to taper and reduce in effective diameter from the time that it leaves the nozzle.

I’ll talk more about that, next time.

*Kovscek, P.D., Taylor, C.D. and Thimons, E.D., Techniques to Increase Water Pressure for Improved Water-Jet-Assisted Cutting, US Bureau of Mines RI 9201, Report of Investigations, 1988, pp 10.

Last week’s post discussed a simple test which helps to show not only how to compare the effect of different operating conditions (varying abrasive type, nozzle design, AFR etc) as a way of finding a possibly better and cheaper cut. It is also often handy to know when a nozzle is starting to wear out, so that different cutting operations might be scheduled to allow the nozzle to continue to work, without threatening the quality of critical product.


Figure 1. Change in the cutting depth of a jet stream, at 50,000 psi, when traversed over ASTM A108 steel as a function of the time that the nozzle had been in use.

While we have found that nozzles from a given manufacturer roughly agree in cutting performance and times before they wear out, the pattern of wear and performance change differs from one nozzle design to another. Also there is some variation in performance between nozzles even of the same design and under the same conditions.

There are also times when cuts are made without abrasive, or when the cutting/cleaning jet is hand held – what to do in those cases? Mainly we have used foam as the cutting target, set up so that the jet won’t cut all the way down through the foam all the way along the cut, so that, as with the steel, some idea of not only cutting depth but also cut quality can be seen.


Figure 2. Cuts through thick stiff packing foam. Note the rough edge at the bottom of the extracted pieces, but the good initial quality of cut that was achievable for some 14-inches.

There is a caution in cutting foam, in that some of the softer varieties are going to fold into the cut, and give a slightly inaccurate measure of true performance, although for a quick comparison to see how a nozzle is lasting that is not a real issue. When cutting thicker material, and also when going for higher quality cuts, that is, however, something that should be borne in mind.

The white expanded foam that is used as a packing material is also very easy to cut, even with the pressures that can be found with a pressure washer type of system. Thus, if you are going to clean a deck or other surface it helps to check, by swiping the jet across such a piece of material, to be sure that you have a good nozzle on the end of your lance before you start.

This may seem fairly logical, after all you just went to the hardware store and bought a new packet of nozzles. Well, as with the other nozzles we have looked at, quality is only assured after testing. In this particular case we ran as many different variety of fan nozzles as we could to see how they would perform when cutting across a piece of packing foam. It is not hard to cut packing foam with a high pressure jet. And since domestic cleaning is usually carried out at either 1,000 psi or 2,000 psi we ran tests at both levels.


Figure 3. Results from a good, top, and a poor nozzle with cuts at 1,000 and 2,000 psi. and with the foam moved through the jet at a distance of 3 inches. The number identifies the nozzle and note that at 3 inches number 18 could barely remove the top of the foam.

A fan jet is defined by the amount of water that it will allow to pass at a set pressure, and by the angle of the cone with which the jet spreads out from the orifice. In passing we found that the cone angle that the jet actually spread at was a little larger than that designated on the package.

The worst nozzle design that we found had difficulty in cutting into the foam, even at a very close range:

On the other hand the best nozzle was still able to cut the material with the nozzle held some nine inches from the foam.


Figure 4. Cutting result with the good nozzle held at nine inches above the foam target. At this distance the jet is removing as much material as the poor jet did at a 3-inch standoff.

A very typical result would have the jet fail to cut into the foam much beyond four inches from the nozzle. (I’ll use some photographs in a couple of weeks to explain in more detail why that is). And as a short editorial comment to those of you who clean around your house with a domestic unit, how many of you hold the nozzle that close to the surface? (Or at the car wash?) If you don't you are losing most of the power that you are paying for, and you are in the company of most of the students that I ran this demonstration with in my classes).

However there is one other feature to the photographs of the cuts that I would point out. Fan jets distribute the water over a diverging fan shape. But the results of the design fell into two different types, one where most of the water still concentrated in the middle of the jet, (as in Figure 4) and those where it was focused more on the side.


Figure 5. Cutting pattern with the jet streams more at the side of the flow. (arrow points), note that the two pressure cuts are on the other sides of the sample here).

The benefit of using foam is that it allows this picture of the jet structure to be easily seen, with very little time taken to swipe the nozzle over a test piece of material at the start of work, to make sure that the jet is still working correctly.

This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Because the foam is relatively easy for a jet to cut, even at a lower pressure, this means that the cut can become more ragged with depth, where deep cutting is required.

One of the programs that we ran, some years ago, looked at how deeply you could cut into the stiff packing foam that is used in some industrial plants, where the item being packed needs to be held firmly, yet will be released easily when needed. This requires that the foam be cut to a very tight tolerance, and at the time, pieces were still being cut by hand and then glued together. (Figure 2 above)

We found that we could cut up to about a foot of material, before the small cut particles became sufficiently caught up in the cutting jet that the edge quality of the cut fell below specification. But in order to get to that depth we did have to add a small amount of a polymer to the cutting water. This helped to hold the jet more coherent over a greater distance, and also reduced the amount of particulate that got caught up in the jet, allowing the greater cutting depth.

Foam works as a simple sample to give some sense of the jet shape, where the pressures are lower. When they are higher then a stiffer material is needed, though it should still be cuttable by water without the need for abrasive. Plywood is a useful target in this case, and I will write about those tests next time.

There is a time, which can come in late Winter and very early Spring, when demand declines and there is some free time for the occasional home project. Although many of us now know and understand how well waterjets and abrasive waterjet streams can cut material, this is still not that widely recognized by the General Public. This slack time can help to remedy that problem.

Uninformed ignorance of jet capabilities was certainly true for many years on our campus, and seems to become more so again as the years pass since I retired. Further, at Conferences, I often heard the complaint that the industry needs to get its message out more clearly to a wider audience. The vast majority of potential industrial users are unaware of how well waterjetting in one of its forms could help solve their problems.

Now there are lots of ways of solving that problem, but today I want to talk about just one, the one we used to help us with the problem. It had to be something that would be used by those we gave it to. It had to be small, relatively cheap and quick to make, and yet demonstrate some of the capabilities we wanted to show off. The answer ended up as a business card holder.


Figure 1. Business Card Holder - Missouri Miner female figure.

University labs are generally cash strapped, and so the material had to be relatively cheap, so we used sheets of a light foam. This allowed us to cut out the figure parts using water alone (at around 20,000 psi) which significantly reduced the cost. Early in the design of the female figure (this was the third in a series , where we cut a different shape each year) it was pointed out that relative body size was more critical with female figures, and so two different thicknesses of foam were used. The first was half-an-inch thick and used for the body and pins, while a quarter-inch sheet was used for the legs and arms.

Figure 2. Foam miner front view – showing the two thicknesses of material

Putting a small hole in the position of the eye allowed the model to show how precise and small a cut could be made through thicker material. The five pieces that made up the total were held together with two rectangular pins that were cut from the thicker stock and fitted through slots cut to their shape in the different parts.

One of the advantages of cutting these (and we cut parts for around 300 figures, and used virtually all of them each year) is that it was also possible, with relatively little trouble, to cut the campus identifier on a leg of the figure. With not a lot of space this was originally UMR, and then changed to “S & T” when the campus changed its name.

Figure 3. A later model of the card holder with the campus ID cut into the leg.

For speed in cutting we only cut the letters in half the legs, though you may note that in this later version we also cut the connecting pins as round rod, rather than rectangular. In this way the figure could be repositioned, as the owner decided what they wanted to do with them.

Basically however they served as card holders, and having passed them around, (and provided them to senior campus officials as place card holders for dinner meetings) it has been amusing to see how avidly they were sought and kept by some of those to whom they were given.

Now we did not get to these figures in one step. The initial idea was to carve something out of rock, since the overall department was known as The Rock Mechanics and Explosives Research Center. However, if you are making something out of rock, particularly a person’s shape, they need to be larger, because of the weak strength of the rock.

Figure 4. Comic-book Miner cut out of Missouri Granite

The cost was also high, since the cuts had to be made with abrasive, and the rock had to be polished before it was cut. (Trying to polish the pick points after cutting led to several breakages, and this is something that is either perfect or worthless).

There are several good ideas that individual companies have, that help sell their name and capabilities where the gifts are of metal, and can be used for opening bottles or of some other benefit. But we could not afford the cost to cut a lot of pieces using abrasive, and nothing that we tried in metal had the cachet of the small miners.

In this case the mascot of the campus is the Missouri Miner, and while the first model that we cut followed along the shape of that cartoonish figure, many of our graduates were going into coal mining, which is also my background, and so the second and third versions had coal mining helmets, and as a further demonstration of capabilities, a small circular cut in the helmet allowed a yellow rod to be put into the helmet to illustrate the miner’s cap lamp.

Where we were asked to prepare small souvenirs for another event we did use the Missouri Granite, but had learned this time to buy tiles that were already polished. Then all we had to do was to cut the shape of the state into the tiles, and then put a University logo sticker on the piece and we had our memento for the guests.

Figure 5. Small memento of the state shape carved out of granite tile.

This was for a specific occasion where the sponsor was willing to pay for both the cutting costs and the materials, but in order to keep costs down (since these were given away) the pieces had to be small. This particular run was one of the more difficult to keep inventory on, since several disappeared during the short time of the cutting runs (which we have found is an occupational hazard with “artistic” pieces where there are lots of temporary folk involved in our work).

Which is, I suspect, an entry for the last piece of advice on making such gifts, and that is to plan on making more than you think you need, and, if possible, be able to make more if needed. In a later post I will write about where you can get some artistic help for relatively little cost to help with ideas such as this.