Most people do not fully understand what really can be done with water jet cutting. With all the advertising and all the effort put in by the different magazines and publications, I think that is one of the major contributions toward the growth of the industry because people now under, stand it and, in fact, people expect it.

I think a lot of architects and designers are now giving greater consideration to the inclusion of waterjet-cut stone in their projects, and clients expect to get something that is effectively waterjet cut. The clients may not even realize how it's done, but they expect to get that kind of work.

That's what's creating the exponential growth, which is going to lead to even more explosive growth in the next couple of years.

Alkire: I visit a lot of shows around the world, both stone and ceramic, and I’ll see a product and know immediately that it's waterjet. Then I’ll go up and talk to one of the people in the booth and they won't even know where it came from.

You see examples of waterjet everywhere and because, as Richard said, it's so widespread right now, a lot of the companies, by the time it gets down to the actual sales network or outlet, don't have any idea how it was made. It's just part of their product line now.

Waterjet-cut products are really creating that demand that's out there right now.

Roundtable Conference: Waterjet Technology - Continued

Continued from

Ferguson: well, the technology is the key to the kingdom in a sense. It allows you to do things that you could not previously do. So now you're really only limited by your imagination, the trick is too much choice is no choice, so it has to be figured out how to bring the category forward in a fashion that makes it accessible to all.

Smiga: I think the aspect of waterjet cutting being cad driven is important to note. Waterjet is not just an advancement through the cutting of stone in ways that one could never cut before with much more refined tolerances and fineness of shape that conventional methods would have destroyed. Because the technology is CAD driven, there's a tremendous flexibility with respect to scaling-I mean if one was a conventional craftsmen and had developed templates to make a given 48" medallion, and then had to make that same medallion at 36", that craftsman would have to start all over again and make a new template.

With the CAD-driven system, the ability to take 12" x 12" tiles and make them 6" x 6", or to make a 36" medallion up to 60" is Very easy. And it allows us to provide Customer service that Probably was never provided previously at least not without great expense.

Ward: I think one of the other things which is really contributing to the exponential growth of the business, which everyone has talked about in different ways, is also the biggest obstacle facing every person offering the service of waterjet cutting: education of the client.