A major purchase for our new company is this 5’ x 10’ Omax waterjet, an amazing machine, but one that will have to be a workhorse to pay its way.

Just at the time when the national economy seems to be going in the tank, we are finishing up with an expansion that has been two or three years in the making. Is that timing or what?

Actually, our local sign business is growing “sideways”. That is we are branching out into another field, which is only partly connected to the sign business. Though we have been subcontracting these services for years, we have done a very nervy thing and are going into the business of cutting metal (and other materials) and powder coating, under the name WPC Services, LLC, across the street from our sign shop in Longview, Texas.

For cutting services, we will use two technologies, waterjet cutting and plasma cutting, both on 5' x 10' CNC equipment. But, for signwork, the waterjet will do the bulk of the tasks for ours and other sign companies. And at the moment, setting up this amazing equipment, and learning its operation and the software that drives it has become a major focus for us.

For this month’s “Shop Talk”, I would like to share some of what we are learning and perhaps mention some tips that make working with any contractor of this type of cutting service go smoother or more advantageous to the sign maker.

A waterjet machine is much like a CNC router, except the cutting is done with a stream of water approximately the thickness of a credit card (.030 of an inch), moving nearly twice the speed of sound and under roughly 50,000 pounds of pressure at the cutting nozzle. This stream of water carries a controlled amount of fine abrasive grit, and it will cut virtually anything without creating any heat up to 8" thick or so.

What does this mean for the sign maker? It means that thin metals can be cut with no distortion and a wide variety of substrates, from metals to plastics, from glass to stone, can be cut with amazing accuracy.

To be honest, we have nearly always used waterjet cutting services to cut plate metal letters and logos, and sometimes for very thin metal cutting when making custom stencils for industrial applications for some of our clients. But, as we have been experimenting with while breaking in our Omax Waterjet, stone, ceramic tile (at least types that are not particularly brittle) and other substrates are readily cut by waterjet.

Some nerve-racking work was the lifting and mounting the main gantry member. The precision nature required very careful handling, indeed.	One of the first cuts done on our new machine was our WPC logo in miniature made of .125 mill finish aluminum.
Sons, Sloan and Slade, get instructions from Ted, our Omax install technician. CAD software like theirs is very precise but not designed for creative work and runs from DFX files that we can generate in our signmaking software.	The Omax machine, unlike some other waterjet equipment, cuts without much mess or noise under water. The level is instantly adjustable by air inflated ballast tanks.
Some of the samples we first cut gave us a small view of some of the detail work and material varieties that are possible with waterjet cutting. Most of these small samples are .125 aluminum, but some are granite and even ceramic tile.
This sign job is the type of work that is ideal for the mating of waterjet cutting and powder coat finishing technology.

Sign makers who want to do custom signs using more creative substrates can work with a local waterjet service to provide some amazing work to their clients. Also, since a waterjet makes very fast work of thin materials, cutting letters from .080 or .063 aluminum, or even prefinished .040 thin aluminum sheet, the cost to the signmaker may be quite reasonable for waterjet cutting of these substrates.

Here’s one thing to remember, if you need a job duplicated, such as letters to go on two sides of a sign or building, exactly the same, they can probably be cut at the same time by stacking two sheets of material and making just one cut. A waterjet contractor can advise you on this, but he will likely be able to price your work very favorably if two sheets can be stacked and cut simultaneously.

We recently found out that companies selling granite for counter tops and other uses throw away many pieces of stone that are large enough to make letters, logos and other sign elements. The large cutouts for double sinks or even sheets of considerable size that are left from a job but are not large enough to do another job with are often sent to the landfill. They simply run out of space to store their scraps, and these are free for the asking to sign makers who can use them.

As soon as I get some done, I will share with “Shop Talk” readers some custom signs where the key elements are made from granite or stone cut on a waterjet.

It has been my experience, unlike other types of contractors, that a waterjet service will be glad to cut on material provided by their clients. Their main interest is the cutting business, not the material retailing business. Bringing your own material is perfectly fine with them. But if you don’t, you may want to set up your file and even nest the elements for them, so there is no doubt how much material and material cost will be involved in your project. The price they give you up front will be more accurate and not overestimated in their favor.

It may help to know that pricing of waterjet cutting is calculated using the obvious variables of hardness of material, thickness of material and number of inches to be cut. But there are also two other factors to consider: the edge quality required (for most sign work, the edge quality does not have to be that high, so don’t pay for more than you need) and the number of pierces that have to be made to do the job.

For example, if doing a school mascot or logo cut from metal, instead of having a series of individual panther teeth, cut a group of teeth that connect slightly (many less pierces) and simplify the details more than if it was to be done in vinyls. The end result can look perfectly fine, but the cost to produce can be much more reasonable, and your profit margins can improve considerably.

Large items of typical signmaking substrates like .063 white aluminum are fast and easily cut on waterjet equipment. Sometimes duplicate sets of letters or logos can be cut together by stacking two sheets to be cut at the same time.	Stud-mounted plate metal letters for indoor and close-up viewing are ideal work for waterjet cutting, since clean precision work is what it is designed for.
These large, flat letters, cut from pre-finished thin .040 aluminum sheet are fast work for a waterjet. We contracted this job to a local shop that cut all the letters in our material for $200.	Though sign work does not require the engineered precision capable with waterjet cutting, these tweezers cut on our machine, complete with ultra tiny grooves on its small jaws and reversed out letters, show the detail work possible from a machine that can also cut 6” plate steel items up to 5’ x 10’ in size.

The CAD software used by waterjet providers will require a DXF file to be created for driving the waterjet. Most signmaking software packages will produce this conversion for you. Providing a clean, finished file for the cutting contractor to work from in the format he needs, even for simple items like stencils, will help expedite your work and keep the costs down.

Some of the photos show test cuts we’ve done while setting up our equipment, including some tweezers cut from ¼" aluminum as a sample of the type of detail and accuracy that can be maintained with today’s water-cutting equipment. It is amazing to me that a machine that can cut something 5' x 10' in size can slow down and cut nearly microscopic grooves in the small jaws of tweezers and do other very meticulously accurate work. Of course, this high degree of accuracy is more important to industrial customers than sign makers, but it is still nice to know what is possible with today’s CNC technology.

The real issue, of course, is how can waterjet services help a commercial sign shop improve their bottom line? Like anything else, it has to do with improving the efficiency, productivity and capability of the sign company. The “Hope’s Closet” job shown in the photos is a typical example. These letters, cut from pre-finished .040 alum, were done at a friend’s waterjet shop. The whole job, with us providing the material, was cut for less than $200 because cutting on thin material like this was done quickly, and our file was totally setup and ready to go. The bulk of our work was just in the installation, so we could invoice that job and go on with the next.

From plate metal to sheet metal, from stencils to stone, waterjet cutting is a service that most sign companies are going to need from time to time. These modern cutting tools are expensive, but they are workhorses, too, and they can help today’s sign maker get the job done and show a healthier bottom line.