X-Box vs. Waterjet Cutter!

[Tuckerfan]

Guess who wins! Apparently, some guys who’ve got a waterjet cutter have friends at Microsoft who gave them a bunch of defective X-Boxes, so they decided to see what would happen if they did a “slice and dice” with the thing. :eek:

The X Box cut into an “X” took about 40 minutes or so. We cut it quite slowly to get a better quality cut, and also to make sure that it would completely cut through in areas of thick metal, such as the vertical fins of heat sinks, and such. We probably could have cut it quicker, but we played it safe since this was a total experiment. The X Box 360 with the circle cut in it was quite a bit faster - maybe 20 minutes if I remember correctly. The reason for cutting a circle, is because “360” is the number of degrees in a circle.
The circuit boards cut easily. The word “X-Box” only took maybe a minute to cut or so. Most of the time on these was spent trying to find a way to hold the circuit boards flat without them jiggling around durring cutting.

[Mangetout]

Amazing!

Do we have any dopers with experience of water jet cutters? I have a couple of questions:

-What does the waste material from the cut look like? (I’m assuming it just looks like dirty water)

-How does the machine avoid abrading its own parts in short order, particularly the jet nozzle?

[Tuckerfan]

@Mangetout

Amazing!

Do we have any dopers with experience of water jet cutters? I have a couple of questions:

-What does the waste material from the cut look like? (I’m assuming it just looks like dirty water)

-How does the machine avoid abrading its own parts in short order, particularly the jet nozzle?

I’ve not used one, but I’ve seen pictures of how they work and know a little bit about them. The waste water looks like ordinary water usually. The jet cuts about the thickness of a human hair, or smaller, so you don’t get much in the way of chips.

The jet nozzles are, IIRC, synthetic gemstones (sapphire, I think) and slowly wear away over time. The modern software controls on the machines can automatically compensate for the nozzle wear and will shut the machine off if the nozzles get too worn. Not sure about how they keep the jet from cutting a hole in the bottom of the machine. It might be that there’s a short limit to the range or they might let the jet’s energy be disappated in a pool of water underneath the object being cut.

[Mangetout]

Thanks for that.

To be honest, I’m very surprised that the jet was able to cut so cleanly through the full thickness of the X-Box - I’d have expected the jet to lose coherence after a couple of inches out of the nozzle.