Waterjet selection

My company has been in the market for a waterjet for several years, and we are getting close to pulling the trigger on a new machine. I have looked into the following machines:
Flow mach 100
Omax maxium 2030
Aks x2

Each machine has It’s pro’s and con’s. Some machines appear to be a better value on paper than others.

This would be our first waterjet and we are fully aware of the upkeep costs and maintenance involved with waterjets in general. This is not however our first Cnc (we’ve bought over 10 machines over the history of the company with most being lathes and mills)

The purchase price of the machine does not concern me nearly as much as the service after the sell. We are in rural oklahoma and are over 2 hrs away from a large city. If we have a machine breakdown, we will not be interested in waiting 4-10 days for a service guy to help. I’ve read a lot of horror stories on forums, on how some machines have had repeated problems and poor service was provided by the manufacturer. I have had problems in the past with some of our new mazaks, but as a whole, I would give mazak service and doosan service a good grade.

I’m looking for some feedback on these three manufacturers…. Good bad or neutral it doesn’t matter to me. The salesman for each company will all tell me “we’re the best!” Or “we have 10 guys in your area, but we’re about to have 15!”

Any stories on any of these machines would be great.

We are leaning towards intensifier pump on whatever machine we end up going with

Rsimmons_82 said:

My company has been in the market for a waterjet for several years, and we are getting close to pulling the trigger on a new machine. I have looked into the following machines:
Flow mach 100
Omax maxium 2030
Aks x2

Each machine has It’s pro’s and con’s. Some machines appear to be a better value on paper than others.

This would be our first waterjet and we are fully aware of the upkeep costs and maintenance involved with waterjets in general. This is not however our first Cnc (we’ve bought over 10 machines over the history of the company with most being lathes and mills)

The purchase price of the machine does not concern me nearly as much as the service after the sell. We are in rural oklahoma and are over 2 hrs away from a large city. If we have a machine breakdown, we will not be interested in waiting 4-10 days for a service guy to help. I’ve read a lot of horror stories on forums, on how some machines have had repeated problems and poor service was provided by the manufacturer. I have had problems in the past with some of our new mazaks, but as a whole, I would give mazak service and doosan service a good grade.

I’m looking for some feedback on these three manufacturers…. Good bad or neutral it doesn’t matter to me. The salesman for each company will all tell me “we’re the best!” Or “we have 10 guys in your area, but we’re about to have 15!”

Any stories on any of these machines would be great.

We are leaning towards intensifier pump on whatever machine we end up going with

Click to expand...

Please add Wardjet to you list of waterjet machines for review. We have an X-1515 with a Hypertherm 50 HP intensifier pump. The machine was installed of June 2020 and we’ve been extremely happy with its performance. Last thing, if you do any kind of quantity work, get a second cutting head. Or, even if you do parts in pairs, get the second head.

vandytech said:

Please add Wardjet to you list of waterjet machines for review. We have an X-1515 with a Hypertherm 50 HP intensifier pump. The machine was installed of June 2020 and we’ve been extremely happy with its performance. Last thing, if you do any kind of quantity work, get a second cutting head. Or, even if you do parts in pairs, get the second head.

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I second that, with water just it seems you cannot have enough spare parts.

Don't know about new Flo's but they used to be a train wreck that started a dumpster fire. Local shop I use has 5 Omax's and loves them.

moonlight machine said:

Don't know about new Flo's but they used to be a train wreck that started a dumpster fire. Local shop I use has 5 Omax's and loves them.

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Thanks for your input. I’m wanting to hear the good stories as well as the bad. As a company, we have always paid a premium for quality machine tools, and it’s paid dividends to us in not having machine broken down. Flow has been the best so far in with their sales department, but this is the second story I’ve heard about them that was negative. There are currently two waterjets in town. A used omax and a 20 year old calypso. I feel certain that in the beginning, we can keep it cutting at least 20 hrs a week. Once we get established, I do not see it logging more than 40 hrs per week

Rsimmons_82 said:

Thanks for your input. I’m wanting to hear the good stories as well as the bad. As a company, we have always paid a premium for quality machine tools, and it’s paid dividends to us in not having machine broken down. Flow has been the best so far in with their sales department, but this is the second story I’ve heard about them that was negative. There are currently two waterjets in town. A used omax and a 20 year old calypso. I feel certain that in the beginning, we can keep it cutting at least 20 hrs a week. Once we get established, I do not see it logging more than 40 hrs per week

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Yeah, that's what the guy that has 5 Omax's thought as well.

I know a guy who went from running an older Omax for a number of years, to running a brand new Maxiem. I don't think he was impressed if I remember correctly. I personally have had better experience with flow tech support than Omax, though I find most people rave about the Omax service being top notch so I may be an outlier.

IMO you need to be able to perform much more in depth maintenance on a waterjet in-house if you plan to own one, than you would on say a VMC. Lines leak, pumps need rebuilt, etc. etc. constantly. They are very maintenance hungry machines. Keep a spare of everything on hand, which includes lots of very expensive parts. I would probably suggest not to buy one if you think you will not have someone in-house who can perform these tasks as they come up, and need to rely heavily on service techs to keep you up and running.

I can post a picture of the 100hp intensifier pump on the Flow (not currently in use), and the direct drive pump on our Omax that we use currently, so you can see that the intensifier consists of about 1000 parts to every 25 parts on the Omax piston pump. I would personally not choose an intensifier pump on a new machine, but also not sure of your reasoning for it.

I’m running 2 flows a Mach 2 and a Mach 100 if you know your machines the flows have issues but are easily fixable. The main issue is flows pumps, parts are expensive and last about 300 hrs on avg. Both my flows are running omax enduromax 30hp pumps and I get about 800-1000 hrs between rebuilds and have about 5000 hrs with minimal issues on the machines. I also have a omax 20ft with a enduromax as well and the machine has been nothing but problems but Omax’s support is top notch compared to flows and have been diagnosing the issue at no cost and have been working on making it right with us. Luckily I know flows in and out so a tech never touches those machines . We have another omax arriving soon as I know they are great machines. If you’re starting out get a omax the support they offer and the access to repair manuals and videos are priceless. Also when you get a flow you only get 2 copies of their software one for the office pc and one for the waterjet. Omax offers unlimited seats and is consistently updating their software. Flow has not updated there software in probably 10 years but I do prefer flows software as I’ve been using it for about 8 years now. If you do get a flow I would recommend staying away from the Mach 500 and there XD head as the 5 axis constantly lost its calibration settings and they even replaced the whole pc and the power pmac and it would still lose its settings. Also the compass terrain follower was very inconsistent and to replace the ring was around 1500 which was a consumable due to the jet eating away at it. The omax 5 axis easily integrates with Autodesk inventor and solid works so programming a 5axis part is extremely easy to do with just a click of a button. Omax’s terrain follower works decent as well it has a few flaws but nothing compared to the compass on a flow and to replace the terrain follower is fairly cheap.

Rsimmons_82 said:

My company has been in the market for a waterjet for several years, and we are getting close to pulling the trigger on a new machine. I have looked into the following machines:
Flow mach 100
Omax maxium 2030
Aks x2

Each machine has It’s pro’s and con’s. Some machines appear to be a better value on paper than others.

This would be our first waterjet and we are fully aware of the upkeep costs and maintenance involved with waterjets in general. This is not however our first Cnc (we’ve bought over 10 machines over the history of the company with most being lathes and mills)

The purchase price of the machine does not concern me nearly as much as the service after the sell. We are in rural oklahoma and are over 2 hrs away from a large city. If we have a machine breakdown, we will not be interested in waiting 4-10 days for a service guy to help. I’ve read a lot of horror stories on forums, on how some machines have had repeated problems and poor service was provided by the manufacturer. I have had problems in the past with some of our new mazaks, but as a whole, I would give mazak service and doosan service a good grade.

I’m looking for some feedback on these three manufacturers…. Good bad or neutral it doesn’t matter to me. The salesman for each company will all tell me “we’re the best!” Or “we have 10 guys in your area, but we’re about to have 15!”

Any stories on any of these machines would be great.

We are leaning towards intensifier pump on whatever machine we end up going with

Click to expand...

Go with a enduromax pump they are the best pumps on the market I’ve used the hyplex primes from flow which are complete garbage and the sales reps push that pump because they make more in commission. Flow sells you on cutting with pressure which is false a 100hp enduromax 60k will beat a flow 94k which is actually 87k and I would highly recommend running them at 70k unless you want to blow lines constantly. Omax is about volume not pressure and there pumps are extremely easy to rebuild it takes me about 2 hrs to fully rebuild one kits cost about 400 through hennco. Do not buy a maxiem pump they are garbage as well. Stick to a 30 50 or 100hp enduromax.

We've run an Omax 2652 since 2007 in a biomedical prototyping and maintenance shop in a hospital. It has contributed to hundreds of great projects but has only racked up around 100 hours a year so I can't speak to high hour pump issues. I will say though that the interface is very user friendly which means you can train operators really easily, and when you're putting something together in the shop you can design and make parts super fast right on the machine. I don't have experience with the other machines but I have heard from friends who've done more systematic comparisons that the Omax interface seems generally quick to get cutting even, even for more experienced operators.

I'm new to the forum so sorry if my reply is too late.

I stumbled on this thread during a google search and I thought my input might be useful. I'm a service engineer for a company that specializes in waterjet, and was also lead maintenance technician for a job shop with a dozen waterjet machines in multiple different flavors.

The biggest advice I can give is besides purchasing the machine that best suites your needs, also pay attention to your geographic location as that can make a huge difference when it comes to end user support.

I can tell you that Flow Customer Service is atrocious. Always has been. They lure people in with free service via FlowCare but downtime can be long and on site technicians tend to spend all day on the phone with little knowledge of the machinery themselves. We have had a lot of issues lately with the Mach 2b/Mach 100 initial installations. From incorrect cutting heads to tables being installed out of square, its been unfortunate to see rookie mistakes right from the get go. The skilled labor shortage has been a real thing in this industry. Unfortunately, technicians right out of school are being sent out on jobs that are way over their head.

OMAX is better customer service wise. Their software suite is one of the best in the industry. Parts support is good although after being purchased by Hypertherm, parts sales all go through OMAX directly which has been an issue for some of our customers. Hopefully that is just some growing pains and should get smoothed out after the new year. The Maxiem systems have proven to have their quirks, but tend to be reliable after the kinks are worked out. The lack of rapid z height control while cutting has been an issue for customers who cut non-ridgid materials, or parts susceptible to pop up. I went through almost a year of troubleshooting a Maxiem with OMAX to get a customer happy. I noticed the Maxiem with the newest OMAX software I was working on before Thanksgiving had some of the fixes and tips I gave them built into the software which was really cool to see. Big props to them for getting that patched in and listening to customers with real world needs.

OMAX Enduromax is a great pump. Our customers who have installed them with proper water treatment have gotten 2k+ hours before the first service. Very impressive. The cooling updates on that pump have been revolutionary for direct drives.

I have no real world experience with AKS. They use KMT pumps so that is a plus when it comes to repairability with plenty of knowledge resources. As far as the X-Y system goes I can't really comment.

Without knowing the materials/parts you will be cutting and some more details on your specific needs it's hard to give you much more as far as recommendations.

Hope this helps.

WaterjetKev said:

I thought my input might be useful.

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It definitely is. Thanks for chiming in. I'm a small shop looking at getting a waterjet and the one that has my eye most is the Techni G2 with it's servo based pump. The lower power consumption and lower noise is very alluring for my tiny shop, but I'm concerned about reliability. I've heard they were terrible 10 yrs ago, but not sure any more. I met them at Fabtech a few months ago and they assured me that the reliability issues had been addressed, but idk...

Hi There.
I have come across a few Techni waterjets over the year's, I have recently replaced 2 for a customer in Iceland and 3 in Ireland. These where swapped out for Omax and Omax/ Maxiem machines.
The customers had issues with the machine unable to achieve tight tolerance and lack off tech support as waterjet kev mentioned geographic position is key. They also consume huge amounts of water.
Hopefully this helps you to make the correct call for shop.

Regards