POWERFUL CUTTING WITH AN AFFORDABLE WATERJET

[Nisan Lerea] I’m Nisan Lerea, co-founder and CEO of Wazer.

I always had an affinity for creating things, for making things, using my hands. I applied early to Penn and got in.

Penn’s machine shop, we had CNC machines, we had laser cutters, 3D printers. But when it came to cutting sheet metal, we didn’t have a tool because water jets were really big and expensive. You ended up with engineers making all of their projects, out of wood or plastic.

There was this obvious hole in the capabilities of Penn’s machine shop. And so, the idea was, let’s build a small waterjet for the university.

I knew that this was solving a problem that was more than just for our school. So I thought, you know, there might be something here.

From a technical standpoint and from a cost standpoint, we’re enabling small manufacturers, one person operations, 10- even 100-person businesses, giving them an advanced manufacturing tool.

Letting them solve problems in the real world and do that faster and quicker because they can make parts in-house. They don’t have to rely on outsourcing and lead times and all that stuff.

So we recently launched Wazer Pro, which has twice the power and cuts two to four times faster.

Users want more cutting, more power, more capability. You know, it’s not that they want something cheaper. It’s actually they want more industrial faster cutting, higher throughput, more productivity.

A single-person garage business is willing to invest in this to run their business off of it. It’s a testament to the need. At the same time, engineering groups at SpaceX and Tesla are also putting these machines in their shops for prototyping and for tooling applications.

And so when you have more innovation by more companies testing out new ideas, building more things. You’re going to get more solutions, better solutions, customized solutions for global problems.