Wazer Professional is making desktop water jetting extra inexpensive

Earlier than Wazer got here alongside, “water jet reducing” and “inexpensive” didn’t belong in the identical sentence. That modified in 2016, when the corporate launched the world’s first desktop water jet cutter, pre-selling $1.3 million price of models.

Quick-forward to at the moment, and Wazer says it has over 3,000 cutters within the discipline throughout 60 international locations, utilized by everybody from small workshop homeowners to main companies like SpaceX and Tesla. The corporate at the moment introduced it’s launching Wazer Professional, representing an improve over its predecessor.

The corporate’s journey started in 2012 as a analysis mission at Penn Engineering, when co-founders Nisan Lerea and Matt Nowicki have been decided to create a low-cost, small-format water jet for the college’s machine store. The objective was to supply college students with a software able to reducing exact components in varied supplies. This concept shortly gained traction, and by 2016, Wazer had launched the world’s first-ever desktop water jet on Kickstarter, elevating over $1.3 million.

The most important grievance in regards to the authentic Wazer was that upkeep may very well be a little bit of a ache — eradicating the slurry from the underside of the cutter, for instance, had some room for enchancment. Therefore the Professional mannequin. In line with Lerea, this new mannequin is designed mainly to handle the suggestions from the present buyer base. The purchasers needed extra energy, extra productiveness and the flexibility to chop thicker supplies. In order that’s what the corporate delivered, providing over twice the reducing energy of the unique Wazer machine. This interprets to a 2x to 4x enchancment in reducing velocity and the flexibility to deal with thicker supplies, together with aluminum, glass, plastic, tile and as much as ⅜-inch thick metal.

Lerea likens the Wazer Professional to a Twenty first-century model of the band noticed, a staple in workshops for over a century.

“We’re reinventing the band noticed. It’s a software that’s been round for 100 years, unchanged. You’re nonetheless manually feeding in sheets of fabric,” says Lerea. “A water jet, as a result of it may reduce any materials, it truly is the fitting expertise for a common Twenty first-century band noticed.”

As somebody who’s used industrial-scale water jets regularly as a part of prototyping and lightweight fabrication, I agree: Water jets are higher in lots of use circumstances, however they’ve historically been reserved for terribly well-equipped workshops. Making high-precision reducing accessible to extra customers and purposes is genuinely thrilling.

Extra productiveness, extra energy

“This machine has the least quantity of upkeep required of any water jet, which actually will increase productiveness,” Lerea mentioned. The Wazer Professional additionally options a sophisticated abrasive assortment system, which collects all of the abrasive materials in the course of the reducing course of. This implies customers can merely dump the collected materials and proceed working with out main interruptions.

For present Wazer Desktop customers, the corporate says the transition to the Wazer Professional might be seamless. The brand new machine makes use of the identical software program, making it straightforward for customers to adapt. Moreover, Wazer affords a trade-up program, enabling present clients to obtain a big low cost on the Wazer Professional by buying and selling of their previous machines.

“We would like our present clients to learn from the productiveness enhancements with out shelling out an extra $19,000,” Lerea defined, earlier than reiterating that the improve program advantages the shoppers, however the facet impact is that it allows Wazer to refurbish and resell the traded-in models.

Priced at $18,999, the Wazer Professional stays considerably extra inexpensive than conventional water jet cutters, costing upward of $100,000. After all, a $100,000 unit may have options that Wazer doesn’t — a far bigger reducing mattress being the obvious one — but it surely seems that many individuals merely don’t want an unlimited water cutter.

Wazer’s development has been spectacular, with the corporate now using round 40 individuals cut up between its R&D facility in New York and its manufacturing facility in Shenzhen, China. Since its final funding spherical in 2019, Wazer has been worthwhile, funding its operations and growth via money circulation. This monetary independence has enabled them to innovate and develop with out the fixed strain of searching for exterior funding.

Trying to the longer term, Lerea sees many alternatives for additional innovation within the water jet house, suggesting that Wazer envisions a complete product line of water jets tailor-made to varied purposes and consumer wants.

One stunning market phase that has embraced Wazer’s expertise is the world of artwork and design. Lerea shared the story of Alison Eden, a glass artist in Brooklyn who makes use of the Wazer to chop intricate glass items in her studio.

“Each single piece was reduce by hand, however with the Wazer, she will produce 4 occasions as a lot,” Lerea mentioned. Eden, by the way, is the proper instance of the type of consumer who wouldn’t want an industrial-size water jet however who can improve their throughput with a desktop-size gadget.

With the launch of the Wazer Professional, Wazer continues to make life attention-grabbing for the water-cutting incumbents.