St. Michael’s Jet Edge Awarded Patent for Waterjet Seal Innovation

Jet Edge’s newest innovation — a high pressure fluid sealing mechanism that improves waterjet seal life by sealing metal-on-metal without the use of plastic seals — received a patent last week.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office patented the technology by the St. Michael-based waterjet manufacturing company. The mechanism was designed by Jet Edge R & D and Engineer Michael Wheeler. The technology uses two convex curved surfaces in single line, which contact one another to seal ultra-high pressure fluid at static pressures.

“Jet Edge’s revolutionary Metal-on-Metal sealing technology marks a tremendous breakthrough in waterjet technology,” said Jet Edge President Jude Lague. “With it, we are able to offer one of the longest seal lives in the industry, which translates into higher productivity and lower maintenance costs for our customers.”

With its Metal-on-Metal sealing technology, Jet Edge has been able to eliminate static seals in its XP intensifiers and ECO-JET direct drive pumps, Wheeler noted.

“This has effectively cut the number of seals that can fail or need to be changed in half,” Wheeler said.  “I've assembled and disassembled these seals countless times and most of the time a quick cleaning of the surfaces with a Scotch-Brite® pad and a fresh coat of Blue Lube is all the maintenance that's ever needed.  The Metal-on-Metal seals that are part of the cylinders in our R&D ECO-JET have at least 40 million pressure cycles on them.”

Jet Edge, founded in 1984, owns a variety of patents related to ultra-high pressure waterjet technology. Jet Edge manufactures complete waterjet systems, and was featured last year on Modern Marvels on the History Channel.