Operational vibration of a waterjet focuser as means for monitoring its wear progression

Abrasive waterjet cutting is a competitive manufacturing technology in the aerospace, defense, and automotive industries. End-user requirements are currently pushing machine builders to improve the automation of their processes, in an effort to reduce costs and downtimes, as well as increase robustness and stability. On this regard, the waterjet focuser is a critical component, as its fast wear progression requires constant human supervision, for promptly detecting detrimental effects on the cutting performance. This paper describes an innovative approach for in-line monitoring the wear progression of a waterjet focuser, by means of an accelerometer installed on its tip. This result is allowed by two separate studies of the focuser, of which the first investigates the sensitivity of its first mode frequency to the wear progression, while the second demonstrates the possibility of tracking said frequency from the in-line vibration signal delivered by the accelerometer, during operation. The presented setup makes use of low-cost sensing hardware that can be easily retrofitted into the design of waterjet focusers. The information delivered is expected to tackle end-user requirements for improved process automation.