Abrasive waterjet is a typical water hydraulic technology widely used in surface texture, cleaning, cutting and other low carbonation remanufacturing fields. This research investigates the effect of impact angle on the coating removal width by abrasive water jet. Experiment results show that removal width expands with shallow impact angle. At inlet pressure of 3MPa, the removal width generated by an impact angle of 40° deg is 3.42 mm, which is approximately 1.5 times the width impacted by vertical jet beam. Shallow impact angle of abrasive water jet can improve paint removal rate. And an energy-based model of removal width affected by impact angle is established combining the structure of waterjet with fluid velocity distribution characteristics. The results of removal width calculated by the energy equation has good correlation with experimental results.