Control Design – May 2019

Assembly required

To protect the IP, we assemble the water-

jet here in the United States. We have an

intimate knowledge of the assembly pro-

cess, which is technically involved. We

designed the components and worked

with many different Chinese manufac-

turers to produce them.

The supply chain in China is at a much

larger scale than it is here. Much of it

is in southern China around Shenzhen.

There is a tremendous manufacturing

ecosystem there.

Our U.S. supply chain has many parts,

as well. It starts with the innovation, the

design and the understanding needed to

assemble a complete system that func-

tions correctly. There is also the  rmware

integration of the control software to run

the machine and the web software to

prepare the cut  le. The whole package

is where our trade secrets are, and all of

that is happening at our U.S. facility.

With Wazer, we don’t have a contract

manufacturer; we don’t have a factory in

China making Wazers. However, to get

the components made properly, we had

to go live there and set foot in the facto-

ries of our suppliers. Our team still visits

China constantly (Figure 3 ).

We are our own contract manufac-

turer, and we have direct relations with

sub suppliers in China who we work well

with. To produce a $7,500 waterjet takes

a lot of design, development and quality,

low-cost components.

Nisan Lerea is co-founder and CEO at

Wazer, a desktop waterjet OEM in Brooklyn,

New York (www.wazer.com). He can be

reached at [email protected].

Polyester

Die-cast

Aluminum

Stainless

Steel

Industrial

Wall-mount

Polycarbonate

It starts with the innovation, the design and the

understanding needed to assemble a complete

system that functions correctly.

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