Thread: Tooling for new edm

We are a job shop and we just got our first EDM. We are looking for some tooling and fixtures for the machine. While we can machine most of the tooling at our shop,I was wondering if I can get some good but inexpensive fixtures and tooling online some were??
your help is very much appreciated....

Hi asraraleem:
Unfortunately the words "Good" and "Inexpensive" cannot be used together in the same sentence when talking about EDM tooling.
Inaccurate unreliable tooling is just such a pain in the ass that it's just never worth it to go cheap.
Beware too, the lure of rolling your own and thinking you'll save a pile of money.
It takes a lot of expensive hours to build really accurate tooling, and for EDM work you need to be within a tenth or two for squareness parallelism flatness etc etc, otherwise there's not much point in running the split-tenths machine.
I built all my own; wire vise, vee blocks, rotary axis adjustable vee, angle plates etc etc.
After I added up the hours at my usual charge out rate, I didn't save very much at all.
At least I got exactly what I wanted, but lapping that frickin' vise in dead nuts square and parallel was a royal pain.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix – Design & Innovation - home
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining

Good advice from Marcus. It looks really expensive, but 15 - 20 years later my 3R vises, rulers, claw, and sinker tooling is still accurate. Paid for itself many times over. Kind of like my Herman Schmidt grinding tooling and Hardinge collets. Expensive the first time, but years late you forget about the cost because they work so good. If you are going to use it every day for years, buy the good stuff. www.progtool.net

Originally Posted by Jerry Dillon

What machine did you get?

We have a set of rulers for a Fanuc 1iC machine for sale.

we got makino

how much would you like for that?

Hi I know someone in USA that has some cracking 3R tooling that might be available including the dovetails.
Message me back if you are interested.

Originally Posted by asraraleem

how much would you like for that?

You ever get an answer on that? Just curious more than anything.