Hi Archer 120x:
Here's a reality check on your hopes:
Makino's Heat extreme seems to cut at about 56 square inches per hour, based on the data I can see in the article referenced by Brian in EDM Today magazine (it doesn't actually TELL you but it shows a sample and compares 0.016" wire with 0.010" wire so you can make a rough calculation with a few assumptions.)
That's bloody fast for a wire EDM, but it's instructive to take that super fast cutting rate and apply it to your parts:
Suppose your part is 10" thick, 48" long and 6" wide.
The cut is 1080 square inches if you can get away with single pass precision and finish.
That is best case, 19 hours in the cut and for a 10" tall block I doubt you can reach that speed because your ability to flush the cut falls off significantly as the part thickness increases.
So you may well be a third slower, which means 30 hours in the cut.
In addition you need to use the super special (and super expensive) Bedra wire to make it go.
Bedra wire is never cheap...Last time I bought Bedra stratified wire it cost a few hundred bucks a spool compared to commodity brass wire (Firewire) at about 70 bucks a spool.
I don't know what the consumption on this part will be but I'd budget at least a thousand bucks in consumable costs and power.
So for a thousand bucks in hard costs and 30 hours of run time per part, are we still talking a realistic production scenario.
Mind you this is all unattended time...once you load the machine, set it up and program it, you can just let it run totally unattended overnight.
So if you set it up on Monday morning, you can take the finished part off the machine on Tuesday afternoon.
Does that work for you?
How are you doing it now?
What's your current cost, and are you getting parts of the quality you need at a rate you can live with?
The answers to those questions will determine whether you give Brian a call to negotiate a machine sale.
I will say that Makino enjoys a superb reputation for building top notch machines, and I believe Brian when he tells you it's the fastest on the market.
Cheers
Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining