Liquid copper jet cutting research

Anonymized company developing superheated molten copper laminar jet cutting at 10× plasma cutting speed. Worked at 10-foot lab scale; ceramic nozzle lifetime was the limiting factor.

People have developed other cutting techniques with even better heat transfer than coming from a plasma flame. One company — who must remain nameless, and I maybe shouldn't even describe this — they were trying to use jets of liquid copper. They could cut through steel with a liquid copper jet at 10 times the speed of plasma cutting or oxyacetylene. The problem was, how do you generate a nice stable laminar flow jet of molten copper? They did it in the laboratory and could cut 10-foot lengths there. They used fairly sophisticated ceramic materials, but their lifetime wasn't very good. This was superheated copper — if you hit it with just straight copper, it could freeze. But with really superheated copper, you could zip through that stuff almost as fast as you can rip a sheet of paper.