[meteorite-list] Water Jet Cutting

[almitt2 at localnet.com]

Greetings,

About ten years back I experimented with water jets for cutting 
material. Besides the water they used garnet as the abrasive in the 
water. There are different stream sizes they can use. Sizes don't come 
to me as I am writing this from memory.

I cut some Odessa, Texas irons. Those have many inclusions and the jet 
would whip around in the material and remove the silicates in the iron 
and leave a big gaping hole. I like the surface where it was relatively 
flat. it would still require lapping after cutting it. I soaked the 
specimens on the spot in a high percentage alcohol to try to rid it of 
some of the high pressure moisture it experience and you would want to 
put the specimen in a drier for a period to remove moisture which is 
some what of a problem. They did use distilled water in their system.

I think cutting irons that are more homogeneous might work better but 
then you never know what your going to get when you cut and you could 
"eat" a unique inclusion out on your specimen using this method.

I think the problem using this method is two fold. First your 
impregnating the specimen with water that has to be dried out in order 
to preserve it. Second anything that isn't uniform in composition and 
varies results in fast cutting in one spot and slow cutting in another 
spot. The first area to be cut then is exposed to abrasion and pitting 
from bouncing particles which has to be lapped out. Also the cost is 
not effective unless you have rare material and do you really want to 
expose something rare to that type of pressure. It could disintegrate. 
Cutting something friable would be a really bad idea as you are working 
with shop people who might not be clear on the concept of a rare 
material.

My assessment is that it is not an effective way to cut specimens. Lap 
saws with a 1/100 thick blade or wire saw is much more effective.

--AL Mitterling
Mitterling Meteorites

Quoting Guenther <abe.guenther at mnsi.net>:

> I am wondering if anyone has had success getting a meteorite sliced by a
> commercial water jet cutting machine? A friend of mine has a high grade
> machine that cost him about a million dollars. If any water jet could do it,
> I would imagine his could.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Abe Guenther
>
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