The team here at WAZER loves meat and loves making. So in honor of July 4th, 2025, we’re going back to the archive to share two moments, one five years ago and another nine years ago when we combined these two passions by using our desktop waterjet to cut meat into shapes that have never been grilled before. 

July 4th, 2016 Barbecue

As patriotic Americans, the founding team at WAZER took a break from developing the original WAZER Desktop and barbecued in the streets of Shenzhen, China to celebrate July 4th, 2016. The video below was part of a series of teaser videos leading up to the Kickstarter campaign in the fall of that year. After the product launch, the scene of a desktop waterjet cutting steak circulated widely on social media, spreading the word about our new machine.

July 4th, 2021 Barbecue

Five years later it was time to revive the wazercut meat shenanigans, this time with a wider variety of shapes and sizes. WAZER team members submitted their design files, which were cut out of steak, ground beef and chicken.

We modified an old WAZER Desktop to support meat cutting. We really don’t recommend doing this with your machine – it is an absolute nightmare to clean! We used pure water for the cutting (no abrasive of course!) but after most of the meat was cut, we experimented with putting salt in the abrasive hopper to give the meat a little extra flavor. That worked as well as you might image 🙁

If that wasn’t enough, we took some spare parts from a WAZER Desktop Pump Box and made gas and rotisserie grills. In the end we had plenty of meat to grill in proper July 4th barbeque fashion. 

“Cut Culture” Competition: Barbecue Accessories

WAZER employees have free rein to use the waterjets and other shop tools for personal projects. Occasionally we conduct friendly maker competitions, like who can use WAZER to make the best barbeque accessory? We’ve done this one twice due to popular demand and an endless desire for clever barbecue tools. Here are some of our favorites:

Charcoal Chimney by Griffin

Winner of the “most useful” award.

Cold Smoker by Matt

Winner of the “most engineered” award.

Sandwich Grill by Varun

Winner of the “best product” award.

Pulled Pork Claws by Chris P.

Winner of the “subtractive+additive” award, for using both WAZER and 3D-printed parts.

2-Axis Marshmallow Rotator by Winston

Winner of the “over-engineered” award.

Bicycle-Mountable Grill by Christian

Winner of the “most creative” award.

Meat Skewers by Tom

Winner of the “simplest” award.

Tessellated Foam Puzzle (to keep the kids entertained) by Nisan

Winner of the “most puzzling” award.