Liquid abrasive cutting jet cartridge and method

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention represents a significant departure from the prevalent philosophy of accomplishing the convenient replacement of the more rapidly wearing components of liquid/abrasive jet cutting apparatus, along with the necessary adjustment for proper alignment.
In the present invention, there is provided a unitized, structurally rigid cartridge assembly adapted to be removably mounted as a unit to a main housing structure in an operating position in a manner to receive high pressure liquid from a high pressure liquid chamber in said housing structure.
This cartridge assembly comprises an integrally rigid cartridge housing having an upstream inlet location and a downstream discharge location.
This cartridge housing defines an intermediate mixing chamber positioned between the upstream and downstream locations, and has an abrasive inlet opening means adapted to receive abrasive particles and direct these particles into the mixing chamber.
There is a nozzle means (preferably comprising a jewel orifice) fixedly positioned in the cartridge housing at the upstream inlet location.
The cartridge housing further comprises a liquid/abrasive outlet opening means which is aligned with the jet inlet opening and the mixing chamber.
A liquid abrasive discharge tube means is fixedly positioned at the liquid/abrasive outlet opening means, with this tube defining an elongate discharge passageway which has an accurately positioned and aligned discharge passageway axis aligned with a longitudinal axis of the cartridge assembly.
This tube receives and contains the jet with the abrasive therein from the mixing chamber and discharges the jet with the abrasive as an abrasive ladened jet.
The discharge passageway axis of the discharge tube is accurately positioned and aligned with the nozzle means, and the nozzle means is positioned so that the liquid jet which is discharged therefrom travels in accurate alignment along the center axis and along the discharge passageway axis, within a tolerance of about one quarter of the diameter of the tube from the centerine of the tube