EDM Wirecraft - Tall Parts
Tall Parts
Another area that EDM Wirecraft has had particular success is in cutting tall parts. All of our Charmilles machines are capable of cutting 15.75” tall right out of the box. We find that many companies just do not have the right people or the right experience to handle jobs like this even though they may have equipment much like ours. Our years of experience with Wire EDM and the many unusual jobs that we have tried over the years enable us to take full advantage of what our machines will do in their standard configuration.
Where many shops may feel that a 10-12” tall part is tall, we find this to be relatively normal. At 15.75” tall, things are just starting to get interesting, 20” keeps our attention, and at 25” we are paying pretty close attention to what is going on.
How Thick Can You Cut?
That is a question we often hear. We don’t know for sure. Years ago we had a machine that would cut 6” thick. We had a customer that told us he could give us a lot more work if we could cut 12 “ thick. We did a little engineering, modified some parts, and worked all weekend to make the necessary modifications. We finished up on Monday morning and got the machine back into service that day.
The next day, Tuesday, the same customer called and asked if we could cut 12.375” tall. Needless to say we were not going to let 3/8 of an inch stop us. That machine went on to cut as much as 16” thick and is still running in our shop today. It no longer is used for parts that tall, but it got us on our way with tall parts. Back to the original question, “How thick can you cut?” I still don’t know because I cannot predict what a customer may bring in the door tomorrow.
22" Part
This part is 22” tall. We do these in fairly large quantities and have very little trouble with them. That was not always the case. It took much experimenting, engineering, and working with parameters to make this job feasible. Even though this part is 22” tall, we don’t really think of it as a “tall” part. By now it has become just another part that we run.
This mold core is about 15” tall. This core has several intricate slots that have much detail on them that go into the core about 1.5” from the top. ( The side we see the wire sparking on. ) This part was a good candidate for Wire EDM mainly because of the amount of detail in these slots and the fact that the Wire EDMed surface would save the customer a lot of polishing time. Could this core have been made other ways? Sure. Almost anyone in the mold making business knows that there is seldom just one way to arrive at the same end. This just happened to be the path that worked out for this particular customer.
This part is a H-13 mold core 17” tall that we cut a number of years ago for a customer. The mold had a lot of pieces that fit together to form what was to be the part area. We cut this and many other components on this job because this customer felt that by using the Wire EDM process they could reduce the amount of hand work necessary to achieve a good seal.
These are just a small sample of the tall parts we have done over the years. Hopefully these applications will give you some idea of how our ability to cut tall parts may be of use to you and your company.
