Wire EDM in Central Ohio

I am new here and I am not a Machinist by trade it is a trade I want to learn. In any event I have a family member who is a machinist and they have every piece of equipment a young man could desire save for a wire EDM machine. In a few months I will be in need of having a PART wire EDM as a final stage of manufacture. Does anyone know of a place in Central Ohio that has a wire EDM machine the only caveat being by law I have to be present while to work is performed on the part unless of course the place has a class 4 SOT FFL.

The part will be made of annealed 17-4 Stainless about 10" long 1.75 OD with a tapered hole perfectly concentric to the center bore starting at .350 ending at .380. I might have the steel heat treated to h900 condition but is really over kill for the application.

Edit:

Might also have a Tube made out of the 17-4 that is 1.75 OD x 10 long with a wall thickness of .070.

Is this a school project or something??
I don't understand the "by law" part of your post.

If this is for school, I may have a place for you.
If you are just looking to have a job done ($$), I have a million places for you.


Email me at jaycrumb@sbcglobal(dot)net
Mention PM website in the header.

Jay Crumb

Jay Cee said:

Is this a school project or something??
I don't understand the "by law" part of your post.

If this is for school, I may have a place for you.
If you are just looking to have a job done ($$), I have a million places for you.


Email me at jaycrumb@sbcglobal(dot)net
Mention PM website in the header.

Jay Crumb

Click to expand...

Not for school. I work in IT well actually I service the IT industry I to field maintenance on server/mainframe/tape libraries etc.


The part is a form 1 Suppressor. Unless the shop has a class 4 SOT manufacturers license I cant legally just send it to them I would have to be present while any work is done. A goal of mine is to eventually become a gunsmith so I can work from home. To that end when I finish college I will be taking a basic machining course and start saving for a Lathe maybe a mill eventually. The plan being to amass as much equipment and skill as possible as a hobbyist so when I am ready for a career change I can start out ahead of the curve. A suppressor is sophisticated thing made up of a lot of simple parts that require proper execution and thus will provide a hck of a challenge for me while under the supervision of people who have doing this for a long time. That and suppressors are cool.

Warning! Warning! Warning! This sounds like trouble from square one.

1) Joe - go to a gunsmith that knows what they're getting into and already has the proper licensing and let them do the work or get it done for you.

2) You're going to stand there and watch somebody?!!! What shop in their right mind would assume that kind of liablity risk?

You joined this forum in May and have four posts. I think you're fishing in the wrong pond.

I have contacts to Class 4 and even Class 5 shops with WEDM capabilities.
I also have customers who need to outsource this same operation.
They usually outsource the WEDM early in the build to avoid the cost associated with having to use these certified manufacturers.
Since these people are obviously making their own weapons, they charge an arm and a leg to service their competitors.
Contact me through that email address and I will give you their info.
Hopefully you will have all of your paperwork in order as they will need it.

Jay Crumb

Joe Miranda said:

Warning! Warning! Warning! This sounds like trouble from square one.

1) Joe - go to a gunsmith that knows what they're getting into and already has the proper licensing and let them do the work or get it done for you.

2) You're going to stand there and watch somebody?!!! What shop in their right mind would assume that kind of liablity risk?

You joined this forum in May and have four posts. I think you're fishing in the wrong pond.

Click to expand...

Not fishing I joined this month been lurking for a year. Though in this day and age of trolling on the internet I see your concern.
All of this work will be done in conjunction with and under the supervision of qualified gunsmiths and machinist. This is not a process I am undertaking lightly or to save money. In fact I will likely have more money tied up in this than it would cost me to just buy a Thunder beast Suppressor. But I wouldn't have learned as much or had the satisfaction of building something myself. As for the issue on liability perhaps I am spoiled because I have spent a good deal of time in the machine shop my family member works for learning about the equipment. I can see a shop where people don't know me from Adam may e leery of having me on the shop floor but I have found as a rule Machinist are more than willing to answer questions and generally share things about their trade.

Jay Cee said:

I have contacts to Class 4 and even Class 5 shops with WEDM capabilities.
I also have customers who need to outsource this same operation.
They usually outsource the WEDM early in the build to avoid the cost associated with having to use these certified manufacturers.
Since these people are obviously making their own weapons, they charge an arm and a leg to service their competitors.
Contact me through that email address and I will give you their info.
Hopefully you will have all of your paperwork in order as they will need it.

Jay Crumb

Click to expand...

Will do. I submitted the Form 1 the beginning of the month so I still have 7-ish months to plan. My issue with Doing EDM early in the process is movement of the material during the welding operation. I could use spacers and have a serviceable core but that would add weight. Another problem I see is cost. It is rather cost inefficient to run a single one off part on. I could go old school and do the whole thing on a south bend Lath but I would certainly have to open up to bore which = less sound suppression.

Wire EDM is just such a fascinating technology to me and the building up suppressor is almost tailor made for the EDM process.

if I was going to let someone stand there and watch any process at all, it would be wire edm. Watching me cook bacon is far more dangerous. (you can't have a fire in a water filled wedm.)

I would let my 7 yr old run my wedm unattended. there is no machine safer than a WEDM (enclosed type).

But I'm in central IL.

dsergison said:

if I was going to let someone stand there and watch any process at all, it would be wire edm. Watching me cook bacon is far more dangerous. (you can't have a fire in a water filled wedm.)

I would let my 7 yr old run my wedm unattended. there is no machine safer than a WEDM (enclosed type).

But I'm in central IL.

Click to expand...

Just tell them to stand there watching it, and every so often reach out and touch the wire to make sure it's still moving.

LOL on the touch the wire bit...
I got hit on a rougher cutting 5" of tool steel before.
I was holding a secondary flush line on entry (non-submersible machine) and got a little too close.
Woke me up a bit, but was nothing to some of the Ram EDM punches I've taken.
6" X" 2" electrode running 200 amps coming in...thank gosh I didn't grab that one after the cut was already rolling and we kicked it up to true running amperage...

Jay

dsergison said:

if I was going to let someone stand there and watch any process at all, it would be wire edm. Watching me cook bacon is far more dangerous. (you can't have a fire in a water filled wedm.)

I would let my 7 yr old run my wedm unattended. there is no machine safer than a WEDM (enclosed type).

But I'm in central IL.

Click to expand...

I think maybe the liability comes from the insurance side having a non employee on the floor of the shop???

Zahnrad Kopf said:

Just tell them to stand there watching it, and every so often reach out and touch the wire to make sure it's still moving.

Click to expand...

Jay Cee said:

LOL on the touch the wire bit...
I got hit on a rougher cutting 5" of tool steel before.
I was holding a secondary flush line on entry (non-submersible machine) and got a little too close.
Woke me up a bit, but was nothing to some of the Ram EDM punches I've taken.
6" X" 2" electrode running 200 amps coming in...thank gosh I didn't grab that one after the cut was already rolling and we kicked it up to true running amperage...

Jay

Click to expand...

Don't touch the wire got it! Can I splash in the water?

Splash away my friend...
As long as your DI levels are good.
Clean water (deionized) doesn't conduct electricity unless in the plasma channel.

You can touch the wire as well...
Just don't be grounded if the power is on.
I had my fore-arm resting on the work-table.

Jay Crumb

Jay Cee said:

Splash away my friend...
As long as your DI levels are good.
Clean water (deionized) doesn't conduct electricity unless in the plasma channel.

You can touch the wire as well...
Just don't be grounded if the power is on.
I had my fore-arm resting on the work-table.

Jay Crumb

Click to expand...

Ha! I got it when I so absent mindedly saw a slight rust stain/discoloration on the table and went to rub it off with my thumb in the same manner that a mother rubs dirt off a child's face... It wasn't coming off at first, so I really applied the pressure. ...ZZzzzzziiiippp!... Ow! You motherfu...

Jay Cee said:

Splash away my friend...
As long as your DI levels are good.
Clean water (deionized) doesn't conduct electricity unless in the plasma channel.

You can touch the wire as well...
Just don't be grounded if the power is on.
I had my fore-arm resting on the work-table.

Jay Crumb

Click to expand...

Zahnrad Kopf said:

Ha! I got it when I so absent mindedly saw a slight rust stain/discoloration on the table and went to rub it off with my thumb in the same manner that a mother rubs dirt off a child's face... It wasn't coming off at first, so I really applied the pressure. ...ZZzzzzziiiippp!... Ow! You motherfu...

Click to expand...

I do hardware maintenance on servers/disk arrays and tape libraries. A tape Library is sort of like a giant jukebox for Data tapes. Each frame the is the size of two refrigerators back to back typically youll have 3-6 frame as many as 12 as few as 1. Here is a video ibm 3584 in action - YouTube and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9vmqxkw6D4 Video dont do the speed that accessor moves much justice. When it is really getting hammered and running serious backups that thing flys around.

Anyways an old timer trick is the remove the side panel in the Management frame to work on the accessor or generally get a closer look at whats going on inside the library. Before doing this you need to pause the library to remove power from the accessor. One time I saw one of the gripper had dropped a tape and I though I could reach in a snatch it from the floor real quick before the accessor came back and smashed it to pieces. I was wrong. It was a dumb thing to do really. Nothing harmed but I did do the classic look around to see if anyone saw. Had a sore hand for a couple days as a reminder. On the older libraries you pull drives out from the back on rails to service them. Well if you don't tell the library to offline a drive it will try to put a tape in the drive you have pulled out in the service position and you end up with a data tape flying out at you.

Yesterday I spent 15 hours on site working on one. They added a frame and new LTO5 drives. The installer didn't upgrade the firmware which cause all sort of interesting and irritating problems. It always seems to take ten times as long to fix someone else screw up than it does to just do it correctly the first time. sorry for the long post but I think you guys can relate. The worst part is after days like yesterday it makes me love my job more maybe I like punishment. There just something about showing up on site and fighting with a piece of big iron that just doesn't want to work and leaving hours later exhausted but victorious.