All About Cutting Titanium with Water Jet Cutting Machines

Titanium can be combined (alloyed) with other elements to produce strong, lightweight alloys for many industries including aerospace, military, industrial processes, automotive, agriculture, medical, orthopedic, and more. Titanium alloys have excellent strength to weight ratios, high melting points, and are extremely resistant to nearly all forms of corrosion. Although titanium is not as hard as some grades of heat-treated steel, it is a very difficult metal to machine resulting in high tooling costs with a risk of scrap.

Engineers love titanium and its alloys because of the material’s remarkable properties, including:

Approximately half the density of steel (and thus significantly lighter)
High tensile strength – 63,000 PSI alone and 180,000 PSI alloyed
Nearly twice the elasticity of steel
Superior corrosion and oxidation resistance
Light weight
Improved resistance to wear and tear
Heat resistance
Unique electrical or magnetic properties

Titanium truly is a versatile and desirable material for highly demanding applications. However, cutting titanium presents real challenges such as:

Poor dissipation of heat from machining leads to edge finish and deformation issues
Susceptibility to the creation of heat-affected zones (HAZ)
Because of its flexibility, the material can move away from the cutting bit or blade, compromising the finished part’s dimensions making complex holding methods critical
Excessive bit and blade wear
Metal shavings are combustible, and the heat generated with traditional machining methods may create a fire hazard

Where Other Tools are Challenged, Water Jets Excel

Fortunately, there is a solution to overcoming the challenges of cutting titanium with traditional CNC direct-contact and high-temperature (laser, plasma) technologies, water jet cutting systems. Water jets excel at cutting specialty materials and alloys due to the nature of the “cool cutting”.

What makes cutting titanium with water jet systems practical?

First, like laser and plasma tools, water jets are contactless. However, water jet systems are cool-cutting meaning they don’t have the extreme heat of the other two technologies. The high-pressure water and abrasive stream are “self-cooling.” This characteristic eliminates HAZ creation and delivers superior to-spec first-cut edge finishes.
Second, with 5-axis cutting capability, water jet cutting systems enable you to achieve near-net parts – avoiding the complexity and difficulty of machining certain geometries (for example, beveling). The benefit here is a reduction in secondary finishing steps.
Third, water jet cutters produce extremely narrow kerfs, enabling you to maximize stock utilization with techniques like common edge and nested cuts. Smaller amounts of expensive titanium go to the scrap pile greatly improving the ROI for the part production run.
Fourth, water jets are “material agnostic” cutting tools. Whether using plain water or an abrasive/water mix, water jets can cut specialty alloys and other difficult-to-machine materials with the same accuracy, efficiency, and productivity.
Fifth, precision and repeatability is very high with abrasive waterjet cutting, ensuring part quality and further reducing expensive scrap and waste.

Get an Application Analysis from Jet Edge

There is no “one size fits all” solution for cutting titanium. Jet Edge has extensive experience helping clients turn those challenges into competitive advantages with a machine designed to cut expensive and sensitive materials like titanium. We would love to help with an Application Analysis to prove the waterjet production process and custom configure the system that suits your production goals.

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