Titivating a Wire EDM Machine

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awemawson:
Yesterday, just to get some machining experience on the EDM, I set it cutting out a pair of 18 tooth 1.5 MOD gears from 1/4" mild steel plate. The gear profile was defined in FeatureCAM and down loaded to the Fanuc as G code.

Came out bang on as per the defined gear (which I should have given a bit more tip radius to !) but it makes what you tell it to make :ddb:

Today's exercise is to get my head around optimising the cutting conditions to speed the process up. Those gears took best part of four hours EACH so not an ecconomic way unless it's in something very hard or is an exotic tooth profile. (Those gears have a cut length of 184.6 mm and took 3 hours 45 minutes and 26 seconds each)

awemawson:
So first results of tweaking: That 20 mm square a few pictures above now cuts in 47 minutes as opposed to 85 previously, so almost halved cutting time. Don't yet understand all the parameters . . .but I aim to :lol:

Kjelle:
Weellll... This has been a rather captivating story so far... :mmr:

Kjelle

Pete W.:
Hi there, Andrew,

I think those gears are impressive. :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

3 hours, 45 minutes and 26 seconds is a far shorter time than you'd wait for the Postman if you bought them from 'outside', especially if your time of need was 17:00 on a Friday evening!

Here's a question, though, which machine/process would you use to make the central bores and how would you register with the gear-tooth PCD?

awemawson:
Thanks chaps - I must admit to a certain self satisfaction at the results! It's also nice to see some people are actually reading this drivel. :scratch:

Pete, If I was doing it 'properly' I would have drilled a hole, then threaded the wire through it and got the machine to 'find the centre'. Then I'd have cut the bore accurately on the machine, then cut the wire, move to the outside, re threaded the wire and cut the gear. It would then have been accurately centered. But you know the threading issues.

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