30/09/2026
Cutting 40mm Fiberglass and Honeycomb Without Heat Damage
A buyer messaged us last week with a very specific problem. He has to cut 40mm fiberglass panels plus honeycomb core, and everything he has tried so far ends in burned edges or delamination.
That is the classic heat problem. Laser and plasma push heat into the kerf, and honeycomb is basically a thin-walled lattice — once the cell walls take that heat, they distort and the panel is scrap. Fiberglass has its own headache: the resin burns before the glass does, so you get brown edges and a smell nobody wants in the shop.
Abrasive waterjet works the opposite way. There is no heat input. The material is separated by a high-pressure stream of water and abrasive, so the cut stays cold. That is exactly why the process is built for normal temperature and pressure, precision cutting with no thermal deformation, thick plate and irregular part work, and dust-free cutting conditions.
For this job the G Series is the one we point to. YC Waterjet builds it as YCWJ-G2060 / G2080 / G3080 / G30100, so a shop can match the table size to the sheet size instead of squeezing panels onto a bed that is too small. Cutting accuracy is ±0.1mm and positioning accuracy is ±0.025mm, which matters when you are nesting small honeycomb parts out of a large sheet.
The rest of the specs are plain: max pressure 4137Bar / 60,000Psi, max water flow 7.4L/min, X,Y dry-run speed 0-15 m/min, max or***ce/nozzle 0.016”/0.05”, max power 100Hp/75Kw. Cutting speed itself depends on the material and thickness — nobody should hand you one fixed number for fiberglass without first asking what you are cutting.
Two things are worth thinking about before you buy.
First, head configuration. The G Series comes as a 3 axis machine, a 3D MAX 5 axis, a dynamic 5 axis, or as a double / multiple cutting head setup. If your honeycomb parts have angled faces, or you want fiberglass skins and core cut in one pass, that is where the 5-axis options come in.
Second, how the jet enters the material. A cutting head with drilling function is available as an option, and that helps on honeycomb and other layered panels where you do not want to pierce through the top skin with force.
The industries line up too. Aerospace covers titanium alloys, CFRP and honeycomb. Automotive covers fiberglass and interior components. Composites covers carbon fiber, fiberglass and foam. And since the same platform handles architecture and decoration work — stone, ceramics, glass, aluminum panels — a shop is not locked into one material family.
So here is what we would like to know: if you are cutting 40mm fiberglass and honeycomb right now, what is actually holding you back — edge quality, nesting time, or just finding a bed size that fits your sheets?