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What is the best wire EDM Machine to buy?

Joe Ruggles

Plastic
Joined
Nov 2, 2015
I have been running a Brother HS 50 Wire EDM since new in 2003 and now we are looking to buy another new machine. What is everyone's opinion on what machine is the best? I know I have not had many problems with the Brother but I am wanting to see if there are machines that run faster, low downtime, better cost per inch to run, that kind of thing. Thanks for all of the input everyone can give here. It is a lot of money and just looking to spend wisely.
 
Agie/Charmilles are pretty nice but, they haven't been living up to there old standards lately and I see a lot of shops switching to Makino. I have a Makino and have been really happy with it.
 
Joe

I have been ( and still am) running an HS3100 since 1998 and an HS50-A since 2001.
Honestly can say that if Brother was still in the EDM market, I'd have a shiny new one of them on the floor as well.

But, that is not to be, so last year got a Makino as the next brand to be loyal to.
So far, I cannot say a single bad word about the machine, the thing is virtually flawless.

Not sure what you're cutting with the Brother, making a semi obvious guess that it's production.
If so, please ask away anything you want as I am strictly a "bandsaw" shop of just about anything and everything
and can give relevant answers to what you're using now and what to expect from Makino.

Regardless tho, one thing you must keep an open mind for: The differences between the Brother tech settings compared to whatever
brand you get are astronomical!!!
Take the 5 little settings you can tinker with meaningfully on the Brother, and multiply it by at least 20 on the Makino, other brands are surely similar.
 
We still run a pair of HS-70A machines and I too wish Brother still made wire-edm's.

All our other edm machines are Charmilles and Agie-Charmille machines and we've been quite happy with them.

In comparison the Brother machines though ... get ready for sticker shock when looking at any new wire-edm.
 
We make tool steel metal stamping dies and most of what we cut is air hard 2" to 4" thick with 0.010" wire. Our cutting dies have as little as .0005" cutting clearances but most have .004" to .012". Fitting punches into retainers requires precision as well. As with any wire EDM I would expect it to give no problem with precision as that is what it is built for. Never even thought I would need to address that issue as I thought it really is a given for precision.
 
I am glad to hear your still having your machines running. I have been running our HS 50-A since 2003 and have put almost 22000 hours on it. I do cut some production on it but for the most part it is all detail work for metal stamping dies. I have had a problem lately with it stopping and tossing a 5037 fault code that points to the I/O PCB and that is over $5000. With it being obsolete now owner of the shop is worried about having it go down and not being able to complete our work.
 
Joe

You will not have to sweat those tolerances with most brands, probably not even with some of the Taiwanese newcomers either.

Now, just noting a few things about My experience with the Makino vs. Brother, I'll let others chime in with
their preference of another brand.

As a Brother user, you will find that threading will be far more reliable compared to the 50's.
Things you wouldn't think of auto-threading into today will be a non issue.
At the same time, if you're like me and prefer to thread into the kerf without ever traveling back to a re-thread position, threading
manually is a single button click away ( you will not need to change the threading mode in the control )

You WILL still break wires! Do not let anyone ever tell you that their machine does not get wire breaks!
But!
You will have a lot less of them, specially the ones that make you :scratchchin:, then :toetap:, later :mad5: and finally :leaving:!


Selecting the proper tech is much more specific than the Brother, and at the same time is also far far more accurate right out of the gate.
On the Brother you likely flew by the seat of your pants for skim settings, relying on past experience and notes.
You will not have to do much, if any of that. Select the proper tech, add the number of skims and the tech will be populated with settings that
produces the accuracy required without too much measuring in-between.

Rough cut speeds should be about 20% faster with brass, possibly 30% with the right coated wire.
Skims may or may not see much of speed advantages other than perhaps from the fact that the rough cut corners are cleaner
and the walls are straighter.

Get used to being able to talk next to the machine!
The Brothers were incredibly nice and rugged designs, but damm those pumps really needed a sound booth around them!

If you normally - or only sometimes even - rely on the BACK button on the Brother .... well, forget about it.
New machines apparently ain't got that one nice feature.

Your backplot graphics are also improved greatly, and you will see and know exactly what's happening, even in tapered modes.

Get used to much more settings to dick with.
And I mean a LOT MORE SETTINGS!!!

Programming is as simple as the Brother.
That was one of my main issue with machine selection.
The Brother had only a few specific codes, otherwise it was plain vanilla G-code.
With the Makino, it's the same. Depending on how you write programs, converting from one to the other will take editing only a few lines.
I can literally modify a Brother program to run on the Makino in less than 2 minutes by hand, usually right on the control itself.

I will forever miss the Brother's wire chopper!!!

I absolutely love the Makino's workoffset usage.
The typical G92 work-set as used on the Brother is still available, but I now much prefer the Plane Jane G54, G55 ...
It does not have the G261/G262 like the 50A, but more than makes up for it by the way you can switch between the gazillion available workoffsets.

Did I say there are much more setting to dick with?


Well, there are much much more to describe, but I think it'd be better to answer specific questions so feel free to fire away.
 
After what I saw at IMTS this year, I would seriously consider a Fanuc if I was buying a new machine.

I ran an Agie Cut2000 for a few years recently -- extremely accurate and capable -- but far too complex, frustrating and expensive.

... and I don't think you can go wrong with the Makino. I'd still check out the Fanuc first though -- they have a slug retention feature/technology that is quite amazing.

PM
 
Seymour,

Thanks for some great info. It is nice to have a fellow 50-A user chime in on the comparison. The 50 is only 2/3 reliable for auto threading and I know that improved with the HS 70 machines. As for the chopper it is such a simple design and runs with hardly any problems at all. Figured if I ever needed to I can make another one for a machine with no problem. The back button is rarely used so not that big of a deal. Kinda sounds like I have been spoiled by hot having to deal with a lot of settings but I can learn. Our maching has never run the speed that it is supposed to but has been that way from new. Even was noted when it was set up and they could never improve on that. Nature of the beast they said. It sounds like you really like your Makino. What model are you using?
 
Mine is a U3.

Considered the U3-HEAT for a while ( has advantages for what I am doing ), but then decided to stick with the non-HEAT machine.

Regarding the settings, the Brother was/is a no-frills machine.
It is designed to do one thing and to do it well, which is production wire cutting.
Kinda surprising that your primary use of it is cutting dies.
It can and will do it without any problems. They are impressively accurate for one-cut jobs, and can certainly be dialed in for tenths tolerances.
Splitting tenths might be an issue with them, but very adequate for most of the work out there.

With a new machine tho, most brands will remove a good amount of DWI from your day-to-day activities.
 
We make tool steel metal stamping dies and most of what we cut is air hard 2" to 4" thick with 0.010" wire. Our cutting dies have as little as .0005" cutting clearances but most have .004" to .012". Fitting punches into retainers requires precision as well. As with any wire EDM I would expect it to give no problem with precision as that is what it is built for. Never even thought I would need to address that issue as I thought it really is a given for precision.

We are in the same business, stamping and forming dies. I was tasked with bird dogging a new WEDM for the shop, so I went around to the big tooling companies we regularly deal with. Our shop isn't big enough to make all the dies we need, so we farm out around 50% of the work to people like Chelar, Tombigbee, Greenville, IST, etc. You know who they are. Almost to a man they use Makinos.
 
The Mits MV machines are pretty stout and trouble free as long as you toss the wire chopper in the scrap bin or sell it. Their Auto-threaders are very reliable. Fairly simple power settings. They are worth looking at IMO.
 
Ahhh...So you had to do what I am now doing. That is good info for me. Thanks! I have been reading up on the Makinos and I see they even boast about using less wire without loosing speed and precision.
 
I'll chime in that I have been really impressed with Mitsubishi. I've only run Mits machines, but we are on our 3rd model and I am really impressed with the MV 1200R...threading in the kerf is a non issue....008" wire into a .015 start hole: no problem.

Interesting that Brother uses (used?) the same G92 work-set....a little weird for anyone who runs mills but sounds like you're used to it?

I've noticed that our wire consumption is probably 1/3 that it used to be with the older machines: the 1200 tips the wire away from the top of the cut so that the wire can be slowed down and not affect the straightness due to wearing.
 
I have looked over the Fanuc site and when I tried to see where a local sales/service are located nothing came up in the USA. That rather surprised me as I know of many Fanuc controls around. I am in Jackson, Michigan and being close to Detriot I would have thought something would be around here.
 
About 10 years ago we replaced an aging mitsubishi with a sodick. Since then we replaced 2 charmilles with 2 more sodicks. They're fast, accurate, easy to operate, have great threaders and give amazing finishes. Plus with linear motors no need to worry about pricy ball screws.
 








 
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