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Teaching myself WEDM?

MushCreek

Aluminum
Joined
Jan 7, 2018
I made some progress at work today- I got our WEDM running! I have a thread under CNC machining about all of the dead equipment at our place, but the WEDM appears to be functional. Here's the deal- I've never run a WEDM. It's about the only equipment, manual or CNC that I've never run.

The machine is a Sodick Mark 25. It hasn't been run in several years, so I'm expecting a few maintenance nightmares, esp. the dielectric. It uses a deionizing tank or cylinder that gets changed out periodically.

What I do have is: the 9 million page manual, a pretty broad range of CNC experience, a retired friend (not local, though) who is a very good WEDM guy, and some free time during the day when the other machine I run (a CNC bed mill) is up and running. The wire is a few steps away, so I can play with it at will.

Am I nuts to try to figure this thing out? At 64, I'm not gonna go to school for it. Our work is pretty simple, and tolerances are whatever you feel like. The machine is just sitting there; it will give me something to do all day. Thoughts?
 
The basics of making parts in WEDM is extremely simple. Its 2d programming, and most wires are very accurate without much adjustment. The difficulties in wire, at least for me, are getting the machine to run at high efficiency. Running multiple jobs overnight, 4 and 5 axis parts, and predictably cutting nested parts with proper slug anticipation.
 








 
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