Water jet cut

This mechanical cut process cuts material through high pressure water stream mixed with ultra-fine abrasive sand particles. The main advantage of this process is that it is a cold cut, it does not heat up the material and hence avoids deformations and allows cutting thick materials.

Once again, one of the biggest challenges is the processing limitation of most cutting machines, originally designed to make simple industrial cuts. Making final cutting files from more complex designs has been a continuos challenge that Factum Arte has developed through collaborations with different artists. Always trying to take the possibilities of cutting to it's limits.

Factum Arte has undertaken a number of waterjet cutting projects, developing a very good relationship with the spanish company Arm waterjet and carrying out several succesful large scale waterjet cutting projects.

Go to Jan Hendrix's Santa Lucía project
Go to Jan Hendrix's Puebla project

Laser cutting

Another example of industrial techniques used in the art world. Factum Arte has collaborated with different laser cut companies on the production for artists like Anish Kapoor, Jan Hendrix or Alex Arrechea.

This technology allows making precise cuts from CAD files on metal plates. The laser, mounted on a linear guide structure, makes the cut by heating up the metal through light concentration and expelling the material with pressured gas (oxygen, nitrogen or argon). This cutting method is incredibly precise and leaves no side-trace if the cut is well regulated, producing a clean cut on the metal.

Anish Kapoor's dishes are a good example of this precision. Thousands of mirrors are fit perfectly together in a dish shape thanks to a perfect laser cut made by the japanese company, Ultrafinish Technology, leaving an invisible separation in the joins.

The main limitation is the production of heat, which cannot be used on certain materials or thicknesses. For metals or materials of over 1 cm thickness we usually use water jet cut.

Go to Anish Kapoor project page