Precision Waterjet Inc. celebrates new location

Figure 1. Precision Waterjet’s Flow Mach 4 4030 waterjet has the ability to cut at an angle and rotate a full three consecutive turns.

When Larry and Rich Edwards, a father and son team, founded Precision Waterjet Inc. in 2006, they knew where they wanted to concentrate the business. They wanted to deliver tolerances that others in the area weren’t.

In fact, the company’s first customer was someone that wanted a rough-cut blank that later would be thrown on a milling center. Rich Edwards suggested to the customer that he could do more than that; he could provide the customer with a part that was much closer to the final tolerance, saving time on the milling center and saving the customer money. The customer liked the proposition and accepted Edwards’ advice. Also, that customer continues to do business with Precision Waterjet today.

“I’ve always told people that want to help them,” Rich Edwards said. “We offer high-precision, good-quality work at a fair price.”

Working with those kind of relationships, the Edwards family built up the business over the years in Cary, Ill. Today Rich Edwards is now president, and the company has relocated to Crystal Lake, Ill., where it has spent the last year getting its new shop in order. Edwards and his team hosted an open house earlier this summer to allow customers and the community to see the new facility.

The company has specialized in waterjet cutting over the years. It has a Flow IFB 6012 waterjet with a 144- by 72- by 6-in. cutting envelope and a 60,000-PSI cutting head and a Flow Mach 4 4030 waterjet (see Figure 1) with a 156- by 117- by 12-in. cutting envelope and a 94,000-PSI cutting head, which has the ability to eliminate taper on cuts and cut at an angle (up to 45 degrees). It also had CO₂ laser cutting capability.

The move, however, gave it room for a new Mazak Nexus 3015 4-kW fiber laser. The new laser gives it the ability to cut up to 0.75-in. steel, but it also has opened the door to cutting metal with reflective surfaces, such as copper and brass. (Because fiber lasers have an emission wavelength of around 1.07 µm, about 10 times smaller than a CO₂ laser power source, they can deliver a beam spot that is much tighter than a CO₂, which minimizes reflection and maximizes metal penetration in these materials.) The laser’s cutting envelope is 120 by 60 by 4 in.

The new facility also gave the shop more room to store raw material in shelving that now stands against the back wall.

The open house gave people a chance to see the work that Precision Waterjet can produce (see Figure 2). Edwards said the company has done well in growing with its customers in the past, and he’s hoping an event like this opens the doors to meet other clients looking for high-precision work.

--Dan Davis, Editor-in-Chief

Figure 2. Precision Waterjet President Rich Edwards talks about different parts that are cut on the company’s waterjet at an open house in mid-May.