Hi Wes:
Orbiting is NOT rotation; instead how it works is that the electrode is made small enough that it can be put inside the bore without touching the sidewalls.
Then the workpiece is displaced sideways in X until it burns the profile is as deep as it needs to be in that one spot.
Then it backs up into the middle of the part.
Then it moves sideways again but this time pointing in a new vector that is mostly the X direction and a little bit of Y direction.
Then it goes back into the middle, then it goes out again a little bit less in X and a little bit more in Y.
Then back to the middle.
Etc etc until it has gone all the way around the inside of the bore.
The part does not rotate.
The electrode does not rotate.
Yes the copper wire is the consumable, but it can often do a few before it is sufficiently worn to need replacement.
If you do it by the twisted wire method. the way forward is to make a steel mandrel and two small collars each with a hole drilled through where the wire can go, and another where a setscrew can go.
Put snap rings on the shaft so the collars cannot move toward each other, clamp the wire into one of the two collars and lock it with a setscrew, and then rotate the other collar relative to the first one until the wire is as twisted as you want.
Then just lock that second collar with its own setscrew.
That's it...set it up and start burning.
Cheers
Marcus
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