desktop waterjet kickstarter

**Jon** · Sep 17, 2016, 04:45 PM

A Kickstarter for a desktop waterjet called "Wazer". The third video is from July 4th, and shows Wazer cutting a steak in the shape of the United States.

**pfredX1** · Sep 17, 2016, 05:21 PM

I met a guy that owned a real water jet once. Well, OK the bank owned it, but he had possession of it. He was the agitated type. I guess having over a million out on a loan for a piece of machinery can do that to a fellow? He ran that thing 24/7 to try to make money to pay it off. Real water jets are something else though. He said he stacked steel plates on his a foot high, and cut through them all at once. What a beautiful finish on the edges too. Like you sat there forever sanding it.

But for what it cost maybe you'd be better off sitting there forever sanding plasma cut edges? You wouldn't be working any harder in the end really. Probably you'd be getting better sleep too?

Recently I got done with a low budget CNC router build here. I don't owe anyone anything, and I didn't break the bank making it either. It's pretty cool. Right now I'm still at the plotter stage with it. I did some test cuts, and it does it no sweat. But I'm still practicing using the thing.

Here's the first decent plot I did on it http://i.imgur.com/YjsaF5g.jpg but the CAM software I used to make the G Code was a bit weird. For some odd reason it decided it needed to run over everything 3 times? So you're looking at that picture drawn 3 times. I couldn't follow those lines like that if my life depended on it. Not even if you gave me 1,000 years to try. I'm used to it now. But initially that kind of accuracy blew my mind!

I don't know. It is still pretty cool. It puts those lines right on top of each other perfectly. That's crazy! If someone had told me at the outset that my machine was going to be able to do that I wouldn't have believed it. The proof is in the plotting though.

**Jon** · Sep 18, 2016, 01:11 PM

I think the first generation desktop Kickstarter manufacturing projects will probably be risky or semi-functional, despite the fact that this one cuts a steak perfectly. There's also the risk of the product never reaching your hands; I'm still waiting for my Kickstarter Cole-Bar. But then you have to think that there was a time when only large companies and the government had access to computers, and then an overpriced and slow "desktop" version of the computer was invented.

The CNC router build sounds excellent, although you know we're going to require more pics of it.

**pfredX1** · Sep 20, 2016, 09:50 AM

Here's a picture of it http://i.imgur.com/t75QZEc.jpg I even have a shaky video of it running.

Edited because this site messed up formatting with that as a link:

It is drawing this in that video http://i.imgur.com/YjsaF5g.jpg The crazy CAM software I used to make that decided it would be a great idea to run over everything 3 times. I'm new, so I have no idea what I'm doing with it yet. But the machine drew that picture 3 times on that one sheet. I couldn't do that.

**MeJasonT** · Sep 25, 2016, 04:29 PM

Originally Posted by pfredX1

Here's the first decent plot I did on it http://i.imgur.com/YjsaF5g.jpg but the CAM software I used to make the G Code was a bit weird. For some odd reason it decided it needed to run over everything 3 times? So you're looking at that picture drawn 3 times. I couldn't follow those lines like that if my life depended on it. Not even if you gave me 1,000 years to try. I'm used to it now. But initially that kind of accuracy blew my mind!

I don't know. It is still pretty cool. It puts those lines right on top of each other perfectly. That's crazy! If someone had told me at the outset that my machine was going to be able to do that I wouldn't have believed it. The proof is in the plotting though.

The 3x plot sound like your post processor is cutting/plotting the shape to a target depth 3x the cut depth increment say 1.2mm/0.4mm steps. When it comes to a post processor/gcode editor have you seen Cambam, i find it it really simple to use and is producing very good results for me.

**pfredX1** · Sep 27, 2016, 08:34 PM

The status of CamBam on winehq is, "Garbage". Well, the proprietary package has a bronze rating. But I broke my wine install so badly trying to get the free stuff to run, I doubt even the pay software would work now. I don't do Windows.

The cat was the very first thing I ever made on my CNC machine. Since then I have become slightly more adept at processing G Code. I have a somewhat convoluted tool chain of programs I use now that for the present is sufficient for my needs. I am still exploring CAM software as I find it too.

It is early in the adventure for me.