Table of Contents

What Is The Water Jet?

Water jet cutting uses a high-pressure water jet and a garnet abrasive to cut through a wide range of materials. The key differences between the water jet and the laser are their capabilities and what materials you can use with it. The water jet can handle harder materials such as metals and stones. We can also cut materials that can not be burned with the laser.

Main Guide

Illustrator

Canvas Size: 11” x 11”

This is the cutting area for the water jet. The bed itself can accommodate material that is 12” x 16”, but the jet itself cannot move past the 11” x 11” area.

<aside> 💡 Unlike the laser, you do not have to adhere to any line thickness or color guidelines.

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Export as .DXF

We recommend using the default settings.

Protomax LAYOUT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTC8MrCnzB0

File → Import from other Cad

Navigate through the file explorer to find and open your .DXF

Clean

This will automatically fix up any issues in your file that may confuse the water jet. We recommend using the default settings

Autopath

This creates the path the water jet will follow.

<aside> 💡 You will see 3 different colored lines in the file.

Green is for traversing lines. These are when the water jet is moving, but not cutting.

Yellow is for lead in/out lines. These are when the water jet begins building up speed and pressure.

Purple is for cutting lines. These are the lines you drew! These are when the water jet is at full speed and what will be cut out.

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Select All

Right click on Select to select all of these new lines. Line them up on the grid to get a sense of where it will cut on your material. Make sure it stays within the bounds of the water jet.

Line

Create a line by selecting (0,0), and then select End and click on the end of the starting line originally created by Autopath. This ensures that the water jet will move from it’s starting position to where you’d like it to begin cutting.

Post

This allows you to save your file in a format that ProtoMax MAKE can read. Click on where you’d like to start from. If you created a line at the origin point, (0,0), click there.

Save