As parts and assembly tolerances continue to tighten, fab shops look for new ways to adapt and change their methods to achieve greater accuracy and improved production flow. Additional set-ups and transfers result in inaccuracies, downtime and loose tolerances. Abrasive waterjet machining solutions can help minimize the amount of additional processing to a single operation – as was the case for Petersen Inc. of Ogden, Utah, a worldwide provider of fabrication, machining, assembly and engineering services.
Large-scale fabrication operations are not immune to global manufacturing trends toward higher precision and greater production efficiency. To keep pace with these demands, Petersen constantly upgrades its capabilities to meet the exacting requirements of customers in the nuclear, aerospace, petrochemical, mining and general industrial segments.
Petersen Inc. found that incorporating abrasive waterjet technology in their machining operations gave them greater cutting accuracy, while also allowing them to streamline their production process. The company has several OMAX waterjets, including a massive 160X equipped with dual cutting heads. One of the cutting heads is a multi-axis A-Jet. “The principle reason we bought the newest machine was for the A-Jet capability that lets us create weld bevels and edge chamfers,” says Bart Anderson, manufacturing engineer at Petersen Inc. “We cut these features directly on the waterjet table instead of having to move the parts to separate machining or manual grinding operations.”