Wazer Water Jet

Overview

You are tasked with designing a functional product that will be fabricated using the Wazer Waterjet. Your project must fit within a work envelope of 18” x 12” and utilize 22-gauge sheet metal (galvanized steel, standard steel, or stainless steel, depending on availability). The final product should be formed by bending the cut piece and should demonstrate both utility and aesthetic appeal.

Research/Brainstorm

I had a couple weeks to think about what I wanted to do for this project since I did the coin sorter the first week but was introduced to both tasks at the same time so could begin thinking of ideas. Some different prototypes that I considered was a towel hanger on the back of a door, cupholder size adapter, pen holder, or even small key chain attatchments that could be interchangeable. After brainstorming ideas I decided to make the towel hanger to go on doors.

Attatched below is a pdf copy of my APA bibliography about the conducted research.

MyBib_ Wazer Water Jet APA Bibliography (1).pdf

Design

The design had to fit inside of a 18'' x 12" sheet of metal of choice (aluminum) while still being able to bend into shape which limited some of the design and overall size of the prototype. I decided to go with a two prong hanger with large flat/rounded square hooks to allow for a good hold on things like hoodies, jackets, or towels being hung from the device.

Displayed to the left is the original design of the prototype for the door hanger as well as any adjustments made in my engineering notebook.

SolidWorks/CADD

To design this product and turn the idea into reality I used the SolidWorks software to construct and design the prototype to eventually be cut out.

Displayed to the left are images from all throughout the SolidWorks design process.

Cutting

The cutting process included using the Wazer Water Jet pro and coinciding software as well as files to finish the prototype. The water jet uses pressurized water to shoot out a combination of water and grit mineral mixture through a fine point nozzle at the sheet of metal slowly eroding/cutting through the metal while keeping tab inserts in certain spots to prevent the cut out from being completely detached. When setting up the cut on the Wazer software I had extra space on the sheet of aluminum so I decided to add the same cut two more times since that was all that could fit within the 18" x 12" area, which ended up being a good idea later on.

Shown to the left are images taken throughout the cutting process.

ezgif.com-video-cutter.mp4

Bending

The final step to completing the project was bending the cut out metal into the desired shape using multiple different methods including a big green bender, clamps, and a mounted vice grip in combination with a tungsten cube to hold the metal down. Despite this process seemingly being very simple the fact that I cut out the door hangers from aluminum made it difficult to bend and a very cautious process since I had to try and not snap/break the metal (this happened multiple times which is why the extra cut outs came in handy). Another instance I bent the metal the wrong way and then tried to bend it back which I believe made it worse so then I was down to one last cut out of the door hanger that had to be very careful with.

Shown to the right is an image carousel of the bending process.

Final Product

The final product turned out well fitting snug over the top a a door while still having enough room to open and close the door without obstruction. It was able to support a sufficent amount of weight strongly holding up my jacket which is displayed in the images to the left of this.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse