Meadow Creature LLC PO Box 2112 Vashon Island, WA 98070 phone: 360-329-2250 email: sales@meadowcreature.com
Our location at the Sheffield building, 18850 103rd Ave SW, is by appointment only, please.
We give personal attention to all aspects of your project.
If you aren't a CAD user, we will work with you at whatever level of design detail you require. We'll work from your Mac or PC Illustrator files, we'll help you learn CAD or other drawing software that best meets your needs, or we'll happily work from paper sketches.
If you are experienced with computer drawing programs such as Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw, you're most of the way there - we can work from most formats, at slight additional cost. We also work from paper sketches, drawn to scale or not, or cardboard mockups, storyboards, as needed.
Waterjet imposes certain geometric and topological constraints - it helps if your designs consist of closed paths, vs. disconnected lines. You get the most value from waterjet, and our shop services, by sending designs that require the least time to adapt to cut.
Q. Why should we do business with Meadow Creature LLC?
A. We aim to be your best value waterjet shop, not necessarily the cheapest, at least not measured by nozzle-hour cost.
We are your best bet for difficult materials, challenging fixturing, jobs that you don't know if it's possible to do at all using abrasive waterjet or any other machining method.
Unlike most shops that provide waterjet cutting services, at our shop, all aspects of your job are expert-planned, set up and run.
Q. How do I contact Meadow Creature LLC?
A. Please email sales@meadowcreature.com or leave a message at our Google Voice number, 360-329-2250.
Q. Where are you located? Where do I send a material shipment?
A. Please address UPS and Fedex ground and express packages to:
Meadow Creature LLC
19917 Vashon Hwy SW
Vashon, WA 98070
Please address Fedex Freight and other truck freight packages to:
Meadow Creature LLC
18850 103rd Ave SW - warehouse
Vashon, WA 98070
Attn: Bob Powell, 206-271-9547
Please make sure all packages include the above contact information and phone number.
Please note: our office and shop hours are BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. Visitors and freight deliveries are by prior arrangement.
Q. What materials can you cut on the waterjet?
A. We routinely cut all metals, sheet glass including art glass and mirrors, plastics, stone slabs and tile, granite countertops, ceramic tile, plywood, rubber, composites, rigid foam - pretty much any non-hazardous sheet or slab material.
Q. What is your work envelope?
A. Our work table accommodates 72" square sheets and can cut anywhere in a 62" square work envelope in a single setup.
Q. How thick can you cut?
A. The absolute limit is about 4" thick for full sheets, and about 14" thick for items up to 30" x 62". We routinely cut steel over 1" thick and stone over 6" thick. For most materials, cost is the limiting factor.
Q. What about tube and other non-flat material?
A. In general, waterjet is for flat, uniform material, but there are exceptions.
We have or routinely make jigs for rolled and extruded angle shapes, suitable for machining one "leg" per setup, as is often used to machine miter joints, slots and holes, and with a second setup, cut angle to length.
We can cut one face at a time of square or rectangular tube, or a small section of round pipe or tubing. This is routine, but requires extra setup time, sacrifices some accuracy, and often indicates a different design approach should be taken.
In general, expect good results if cutting through only the top surface, and poor results if cutting all the way through to the bottom surface in the same setup. Small diameter pipe and round tube can be fish-mouthed with fair results. Large pipe or tube is particularly unsuitable.
Q. Can I use the waterjet to make mosaics?
A. Yes, we have extensive experience in design, planning and setups for inlays and mosaics in stone, tile, glass, etc. We can work with you to adapt your artwork to the waterjet process and find the aesthetic and economic tradeoff that works best for you.
Q. Can you cut granite and other stone countertops?
A. Yes, we cut granite, marble, composite or any other solid countertop material in any thickness, for countertops, backsplashes, mantels, stair treads, etc. We can precisely cut whatever you want, but please note that we don't provide edge finishing like a countertop shop - all we provide is the clean, sharp cut edge, not a rounded over and polished finished edge.
Q. You're on an island - how do I do business with you?
A. Most of our customers are in the Pacific Northwest, and have never been to our shop. We communicate effectively by email and phone. Email is a great way to send CAD files and photographs.
We stock the most commonly demanded materials and have remnants in a wide range of other materials and thicknesses. For a small job, we can provide material or you can mail it or deliver it to our shop.
Many finished parts are easily and inexpensively shipped via USPS and Flat Rate boxes. For pallet shipments, greater Seattle is well-served by Vashon Trucking, 206-463-9803.
Q. What materials do you stock?
A. We stock steel and aluminum in common thicknesses, and have remants of many other materials in quantity suitable for prototype and small production runs.
We stock hot-rolled mild steel in 18 awg, 16 awg, 14 awg, 1/8", 1/4", 3/8" and 1/2".
We have a large assortment of stainless and aluminum sheet remnants.
Material is priced at retail plus a small markup to reflect our cost of maintaining an inventory. For small orders using our stocked material, we will probably charge you less for your material than it would cost you to buy what you need elsewhere.
For material that we don't stock, we can get what you need, but it it may cost
you less to provide your own material.Q. How do I send my designs to Meadow Creature?
A. You can send CAD or other drawing files, or we can create CAD files as needed from whatever you care to send - paper drawings, scans, photographs, cardboard templates etc.
Our standard import and work format is a DXF file. We can import from any CAD system and many drawing programs. If using 3D CAD, please send us a 2-D projections, flattened and ungrouped, and stripped of any surface rendering or shading.
We can read and convert vector files created by most versions of Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw, but with some caveats:
For Adobe Illustrator, please "ungroup" your design, remove any color or shading, and send us an "AI" file.
For Corel Draw, please save a copy of your design, "ungroup" it, remove any color or shading, and use "save as" to save it as a DWG file. We are unable to read the CMX, CDR or DXF files generated by Corel.
Q. What do your waterjet services cost?
A. Please send us your design and material specification, and we'll quote on a per-piece and per-job basis.
The cost to cut a part depends on the material, thickness, hardness cut length, cut shape, and your required precision and cut edge quality - all those factors multiply and interplay. Job costs vary from perhaps $.25 to $2 per linear foot of the cut edge for sheet metal, and $2 to $10 per linear foot for steel plate from 1/8" to 1" thick.
In some materials, long straight lines can cut at up to 1/10 the cost per length compared with sharp inside corners.
We're happy to do one-off small jobs - for customers who provide suitable CAD files, we do many complete jobs for the minimum shop charge of $60, often including postage for delivering finished parts. The cost to provide an exact quote can be most of the cost of completing the entire job, so $60 is a good starting point.
If you're an artist working with unique natural material, or you need to see the
cut-by-cut result and adjust your specifications - again, we're happy to
accommodate your needs, and work by the minute instead of on a fixed quote
basis.Q. What is cut quality? What about accuracy?
A. A high-quality cut edge has the appearance of a uniform bead-blast finish, on the cut edge, and little or no burr. A low-quality cut has the appearance of a good machine-torch or plasma-cut edge. A medium-quality cut typically has the appearance of a good bandsaw cut, or a uniform bead-blast appearance about 2/3 of the way through the cut that transitions to the "lag" pattern of a plasma cut toward the bottom surface.
Low quality is usually used along edges that will be welded, for fixed-fastener clearance holes, or otherwise where edges are hidden.
Higher qualities are used where either precision or aesthetics require it. The cost difference over the range from lowest to highest cut edge quality, for a given part feature, is about 4X. The typical cut, a tradeoff appropriate for most work, is in between.
An average quality cut in small workpieces has a typical absolute accuracy of about +- .002" over the full thickness of the material.
Accuracy over large workpieces is affected by the material, machine and catch tank water temperatures. Accuracy in large pieces is also affected by material stresses e.g. in hot rolled steel released as cutting progresses. Warped material reduces accuracy.
Small circular holes are typically accurate within +-.002" of diameter, except for a slight deviation at the start/stop point, that typically prevents an on-size gage pin from entering a hole smaller than about .005" above the pin size. More spefically, a waterjet hole makes an excellent "tap drill" pilot hole with no size adjustment, but a waterjet hole that needs to clear a shaft or pin is often cut slightly oversize, or hand finished, or cut undersize and then reamed.
Q. What is your minimum charge?
A. Our minimum invoice amount is $60 - that's for any combination of setup and cutting time.
For "while-you-wait" jobs, where the job is scheduled to have the customer present, for example to supervise the positioning of material and cuts, the minimum invoice is $90.
Small jobs are welcome - that's part of our mission to serve island small businesses. Please keep in mind that to avoid a design service charge that dwarfs the cut cost for a small job, try to be prepared with a clean DXF file that requires no rework to run on the OMAX.
If that's a regular thing - we will help you learn to use our services most cost-effectively.
Q. I have a rough idea what I want - will you help design it?
A. In general, yes. For life-safety parts, we make parts only "to customer drawing".
Q. What other services does VIW provide?
A. CAD design, for original work or for adapting existing methods to waterjet.
Waterjet offers new paradigms of mechanical design and fabrication - replacing castings, stampings, brake-bent items with self-aligning tab-and-slot fabrications cut from flat sheet stock and joined using low-distortion plug welds. We can help redesign your part or product for cheaper and more accurate fabrication unique to the waterjet process.