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A Cut Above

WHOI machinist Timothy Kling cuts titanium into a component for the frame of the upgraded Alvin, the nation’s deep-diving human-occupied research submersible. He is using a water jet, which directs a stream of water under a pressure of 55,000 pounds per square inch mixed with tiny (175-micrometer) particles of garnet. “Basically anything you stick underneath there, it’ll slice it right up, just like butter, from one-thirty-secondths of an inch of material up to eight inches of metal,” Kling said. More than 100 engineers and technicians at WHOI took part in building the new Alvin.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)