SBIR Phase I: Hydraulic System Design for a Low-cost Abrasive Waterjet Cutter

这个SBIR一期项目旨在通过对机器核心部件的全面重新设计，以满足消费者的预算需求，将工业先进的磨料水射流切割制造方法带给个人消费者。该项目平行于当前缩小先进制造技术（如激光切割和3D打印）的运动，以适应不断增长的桌面制造市场。不幸的是，目前消费者市场上可用的桌面数字制造工具仅限于生产塑料和木材等软材料的产品。磨料水射流切割的最大优势在于其切割范围广泛，包括塑料、金属、石材、陶瓷、玻璃、复合材料等。随着这项技术最终被更广泛的受众所接受，从中学机器人专家到创意企业家，到创客空间，到工匠，再到小企业，每个人都将能够在目前可用的片状材料的全部策略中以数字方式创建物理设计。目前的商业水射流设计在高压区域运行，这使得组件对消费者市场来说过于昂贵。为了使该技术适用于大众，它必须适应较低压力的空间，以利用整个机器的必要组件成本节约。首先，通过设计和执行测试矩阵，为低压磨料水射流切割创建一个新的性能模型，该模型将确定各种水射流参数（水压、水流速率、磨料流速等）如何影响切割性能。了解了这一点，系统的核心液压泵将被改造和定制，而液压泵目前还没有用于水射流切割。最后，这一努力的结论是重新设计的水射流？s切割头（喷射高速水和磨料混合物的组件）采用低成本材料，制造工艺和针对低压切割优化的独特几何形状。

This SBIR Phase I project aims to bring the industrial advanced manufacturing method of abrasive waterjet cutting to individual consumers by fully redesigning the core components of the machine to meet the budgetary needs of a consumer. This project parallels the current movement of scaling down advance manufacturing techniques such as laser cutting and 3D printing to the growing desktop fabrication market. Unfortunately, the desktop digital fabrication tools currently available to consumer market are restricted to producing goods in only soft materials like plastics, and wood. The biggest advantage of abrasive waterjet cutting is its cutting ability in a wide range of materials including plastics, metals, stone, ceramics, glass, and composites. With this technology finally accessible to a wider audience, everyone from the middle school robotocist, to a creative entrepreneur, to the makerspaces, to artisans, to small businesses will be able to digitally create physical designs in the full gambit of sheet materials that are currently available.Current commercial waterjet designs operate in a high pressure region that makes components prohibitively expensive for the consumer market. To make the technology viable for the masses it must be adapted to a lower pressure space to leverage the necessary component cost savings across the machine. This starts by creating a new performance model for low-pressure abrasive waterjet cutting through the design and execution of a test matrix that will determine how cutting performance is affected by various waterjet parameters (water pressure, water flow rate, abrasive flow rate, etc.). With this understanding, the heart of the system, the hydraulic pump, will be adapted and customized from a pump construction that is not currently used for waterjet cutting. Lastly, this effort concludes with a ground-up redesign of the waterjet?s Cutting Head (the assembly that ejects the high velocity mixture of water and abrasive) utilizing low-cost materials, manufacturing processes and a unique geometry optimized for low-pressure cutting.