Titanium is one of those materials where waterjet really shines. We got a job earlier this month — cutting blanks from 0.25″ Ti-6Al-4V sheet for an aerospace customer. The blanks had curved profiles and needed to be held flat for subsequent machining operations, which meant absolutely no heat-affected zone was acceptable. Laser and plasma were off the table.
Our Flow waterjet runs at 60,000 PSI with garnet abrasive. For 0.25″ titanium we set the cut speed at about 6 IPM and it came out beautifully — smooth edge, no HAZ, no warping. Part geometry was cut from DXF files imported directly into the FlowMaster software, and nesting was tight because titanium sheet isn’t cheap.
We cut 85 blanks from three 48×96 sheets with very little scrap. The customer sent the parts straight to machining after receiving them — no secondary cleanup needed on the cut edges. Waterjet doesn’t get used on everything, but for exotic alloys where thermal effects are a concern, it’s hard to beat. We’re running this customer’s parts on a monthly basis now.