Historical development of Abrasive Water jet machining

The inability of water jet machining of cutting hard materials led to the development of abrasive water jet machining. As we discussed earlier that use of high velocity water jet was unable to cut harder materials and thus lot of research was going on which led to the development of AWJ machining in the year 1980 and the first commercial abrasive entrainment AWJM system was made available in the year 1983. In this process, abrasives were added to the water jet, which would then strike the work material with high velocity that they obtain from the kinetic energy of the water jet. This resulted in enhanced metal removal rate than that of conventional water jet machining process. Later many developments were made in the process namely in the type of abrasives used for different materials, nozzle design, velocity and pressure variation etc… 

Later a suspended type of AWJM system was developed which led to the introduction of air along with abrasives in the water stream which simplified the system and thus, at present, most commonly used in the industry. A general layout of abrasive water jet machining system is shown below.