Customized water cutting system for Kongsberg

Uncompromising performance and quality

The vision of the Aerospace BU of Kongsberg, a Danish multinational company, is to support its customers with products that guarantee the best possible performance: this is why the
company has committed great resources to always be at the forefront of technology and, as their motto states, never settle for anything less than the best.

“It goes without saying that, beating the largest players in the sector and winning the tender for the supply of water jet cutting technology, gives us great satisfaction and confirms our role as leaders in technology”, says Mr Massimo Russo, engineer and Vice President of Waterjet Corporation who followed the order together with the distribution agent for northern Europe.

Kongsberg had already developed a certain expertise in water jet cutting technologies by purchasing a smaller machine a from competitor several years ago: the need to process the latest-generation carbon fibres, used for the construction of parts of the wing profiles of the NEW F35s, demanded that the company acquire the best technology available on the market to carry out trimming, caulking, drilling, and other types of 3D processing.

This new generation of aircraft is built with highly innovative, high-performance materials that cannot be subjected to any kind of mechanical or physical decay.

Delamination of the carbon fibre is the main criticality that Kongsberg must face when processing these materials: thanks to the synergy between the mechanical pre-drilling system the machine is equipped with, and the electronic management of the water jet pressure of the high-efficiency Servo hybrid pump, Kongsberg is able to process the pieces avoiding the danger of delamination.

The machine, featuring a 3350×1600 mm work surface, was found to be superior to those of the competition in terms of mechanical precision in all types of processing, the quality of the components, and the equipment of the 5-axis cutting head (the mechanical Touch Wave pre-probing system, for example), and in terms of all those automated systems that, thanks to the software, developed in-house by Waterjet and the specific HMI, are accessible and functional even for less experienced operators.

The machine is equipped with an X3 Evolution 3D cutting head with 5 interpolating axes for inclined cutting at ± 69 ° degrees in the space: the workpieces are fixed on templates that have led to the customization of the work surface tooling to ensure the correct positioning of the workpiece.

The picture that emerges from all the technical specifications is that of a very modern machine that incorporates the principles of Industry 4.0 and green production thanks to the high energy saving pump and the sludge evacuation and water filtration systems to recover processing waste.

Beating the largest players in the sector and winning the tender for the supply of water jet cutting technology

Ing. Massimo Russo