Eli5: in a high pressure water cutting macchine, how does the water jet not cut part of the machine under the object that is being cut?
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The lowest part of the cutting area is a water catch basin. So any water and sand from the cutting jet will get slowed down by the water. But you still need something to support the material that is being cut. The first protection is to make sure to have as little material for support as possible. So instead of a sheet there is a grid. That means that most of the time the cutter will be between these grid squares and therefore only the material being cut is bellow the cutter. But when the cutter do cross over one of the ribs in this support material it will wear it down.
The first way to protect it is to make sure the feed rate of the water jet is set correctly for the material it is cutting. You want the cutter to move just fast enough so that as it cuts through the material it moves on. So very little of the water jet actually goes through the material onto the supports. But the support material is still made quite thick, usually over an inch. So when it gets tiny cuts it is not going to compromise its structural integrity. But over time you do have to replace this as it does wear down and become uneven.
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