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A few months ago we completely re-designed and replaced our waterjet table. This was the second attempt at improving the life and reliability of the table. The machine came from the factory with standard 4″ plastic bricks that sat on top of heavy duty grates. The surface was wonderful to work on as material could be screwed down onto the bricks to prevent movement and we could easily cut small parts. The downsides of the plastic table were that it didn’t last long (especially when cutting repetitive nests) and the replacement cost was very expensive at over $20 per brick.

Our first iteration of table improvement involved replacing the plastic with 4″ thick metal slats. The difficulty was to design and build a slat filled table that was large enough to cut 5′ x 12′ sheets that was fabricated from our most common 4′ x 10′ sheets. We decided to punch slat holders that held slats in the X direction with a slight curve to minimize “jiggling” during cutting. The table seemed to be an improvement, but the slats wiggled considerably during cutting and the holders were quickly cut to shreds (as expected, just not that fast).

Our second iteration involved fabrication of several 2′ x 4′ grid structures. We sheared and punched the slats from 16ga or 14ga drops, interlaced them, and put a small weld in the corner of each intersection. We then simply laid the bricks on top of the existing heavy duty grates that the previous two table sat on. We essentially replace our plastic bricks with metal ones at a considerable cost savings.

The new table has exceeded all of our expectations. The estimated cost of the bricks is minimal due to the fact that all the slats are cut from scrap and they last so much longer than our previous versions. In fact, our first set of bricks lasted long enough to fill the entire waterjet with sand before needing to be replaced (and only a few of the more heavily used ones needed to be replaced). The fact that all of the slats are welded at every join allows the bricks to remain rigid even if parts of them get cut all the way through. The only downside to the new table is that we have to tab small parts to prevent them from falling through the table.