how to determine wear on Wire EDM guides

[Luke.kerbey]

Hi Folks,

as the tittle suggests, how does everyone determine or even measure the wear of the guides?
Our service man from Sodick, who is very top-notch, always suggests replacing our guides every year, even when we do less than 2000 hours in a year.
i keep all our replaced parts and looking at a 20:1 shadow graph (attached), i can't tell the difference between a brand new guide and a supposedly worn one.

i will be interested to hear anyone's methods.
Thanks, Luke.

 

[plastikdreams]

I'm not familiar with sodick machines but usually guides are wear items. Even though you don't run 24/7 you can get cuts and even buildup on them. If you run a lot of taper cuts they will wear faster.

 

[JZ.]

Hi Folks,

as the tittle suggests, how does everyone determine or even measure the wear of the guides?
Our service man from Sodick, who is very top-notch, always suggests replacing our guides every year, even when we do less than 2000 hours in a year.
i keep all our replaced parts and looking at a 20:1 shadow graph (attached), i can't tell the difference between a brand new guide and a supposedly worn one.

i will be interested to hear anyone's methods.
Thanks, Luke.


View attachment 348663

I run mine until I see an oblong hole on the comparator, I typically give them quick check during maintenance, but I def push them over the recommended 2,000hrs. I also keep a sperate set that I use for 4axis cutting to help reduce wear on the guides.

 

[nlancaster]

We use our Sodick EDMs, 2 AG600L, for 100+ hours a week each, we keep them as busy as possible.

We inspect our guides on every change with our in house optical measuring tools, Micro Vu Vertex machines.

We are able to check sizes down into the .00010 range reliably so we just measure and look for increases from nominal over .0002.

Example a brand new set of .010 guides typically measure optically at .0102-.0104. When they get to .0106-.0108 we retire them.

We are currently using up all of our sapphire guides to replace them with Diamond guides.

We get several months worth of use out of our Sapphire guides but they do wear out.

Our current set of .010 Diamond guides are currently 3 years old with no measurable wear on them.

 

[Luke.kerbey]

Thanks for the replies. We typically cut in all directions with every axis frequently so I’m not expecting any grooves or oval guides. But our mitutoyo shadow graph measures in 2 microns. So I’ll try to measure the difference between a new set and old to see what happens.
I haven’t tried it yet because I wasn’t convinced I could take a measurement that accurately, but I’ll see what happens.

 

[wdevine]

We definitely went multiple years before replacing diamond guides. A lot will depend on the kind of work you're doing and what kind of tolerances you're trying to hold. I'm of the opinion that as long as you're getting the accuracy and speed you expect then I wouldn't be changing them.