Wow, I kinda let this thread get away from me. Let me catch up on a few things.
Not really, but different materials require different setups. It can also be a little bit of an art. When it cuts, the "spray" fans out as it goes through the material. The material cut away is narrower at the top surface than at the back surface. Some machines can compensate for this by tipping the cutting head. This works very well for making cut outs, but when your trying to make a hole that will eventually hold a thread takes more care.
That's right on the money. His machine has a dynamic head so it can rotate 8 degrees to make the cut out true all the way to the bottom of the material and send all the taper to the piece that'll be cut out. His shop has done every weird material that I've ever heard of. Obviously it's impossible to do anything with tempered glass but he has done some work with fuse glass before. It can have some chipping but I've never seen it shatter the pane itself and the chips are no bigger than what you'd get from using a glass saw maybe even smaller. If the hole is large enough then you make the initial pierce in the center of the hole (which is the point 90% of the chipping will come from) and you should have a perfect piece.
Mike: Doing the reflectors would be a snap. The way that material is made we could probably do those 4 or 5 high depending on the tolerances. Running them stacked like that cuts down on the run cost considerably.
yeah i wonder what the cost of making something using a waterjet would be. cant be cheap, or could it?
I don't have any say in what the price is to run the machine. It is incredibly efficient effective and clean and as such it comes at a price. Some materials the only cost effective way to cut them is by waterjet same way it is that some jobs can only get the required parameters by waterjet. It isn't for every project, but it is perfect for the very demanding one.
On a side note, my father also has a saltwater set up at his place and I plan on setting up a profile for him to get on here. It'll be better to talk to the man himself instead of risking losing anything in translation.