xyzzy
Aluminum
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2008
- Location
- California, USA
Greetings -
I'm a small prototype shop focused mostly on vintage car restoration. Have a Fadal 3016 and Romi M17, both with Fanuc controls (as well as manual machines.) For historical reasons we use Solidworks/Gibbscam for CAD/CAM. I was thinking about adding another CNC machine like a Deckel to expand our capabilities, but it's been suggested a wire EDM would have a greater impact and better flexibility (think splines, gears, small, finicky old car parts, etc.)
I've started to look into it, and of course another learning curve. One initial problem, like many others have, is space. A Makino U3 or similar machine could fit, and is fine for X/Y travel but too limited for Z. A work envelope of 12x12x12 or a bit larger would be perfect.
I'd welcome any suggestions on machines or opinions in general. Should we jump into EDM or stick to what we know with conventional CNC machines?
Thanks - Jon
I'm a small prototype shop focused mostly on vintage car restoration. Have a Fadal 3016 and Romi M17, both with Fanuc controls (as well as manual machines.) For historical reasons we use Solidworks/Gibbscam for CAD/CAM. I was thinking about adding another CNC machine like a Deckel to expand our capabilities, but it's been suggested a wire EDM would have a greater impact and better flexibility (think splines, gears, small, finicky old car parts, etc.)
I've started to look into it, and of course another learning curve. One initial problem, like many others have, is space. A Makino U3 or similar machine could fit, and is fine for X/Y travel but too limited for Z. A work envelope of 12x12x12 or a bit larger would be perfect.
I'd welcome any suggestions on machines or opinions in general. Should we jump into EDM or stick to what we know with conventional CNC machines?
Thanks - Jon