Titivating a Wire EDM Machine

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awemawson:
All this of course is a distinct case of ''scope creep :ddb: ''

So today was a blasting spraying sort of day. Wind a bit too breezy but I think I've got away with it.

awemawson:
So now it's all back together and looking slick in it's new coat of paint :ddb: A bit of touching up needed in places, mainly as I got a reaction between the paint and the blue workshop paper towels that I used to separate the panels as they were fully hardening.

awemawson:
I do have one issue to sort - if you look closely in the last picture you can see that the sliding covers that I had all the trouble joining together have warped. The original one was slightly curved but the one I made was nice and flat. Foolishly I decided to lightly glass blast them to get the finish texture on both to be the same. They warped all over the place and despite my best efforts I cannot get them to lay sufficiently flat not to rub on various bits of the machine. The easiest solution is to make another pair and that is what I've decided to do. But this time they'll get sprayed 'as is' :ddb:

Now it's back together and offers the prospect of being used in earnest I decided to attack the wire threading issue head on. Two issues - visibility and tapering the wire end.

The first issue is that you cannot see the 'funnel' that you are aiming the end of the wire at from underneath the arm assembly. OK a 6" mirror tile with three 'feet' super glued on the back to keep it out of the water makes a significant improvement.

The second issue is that the wire is only microns smaller than the guide hole and needs tapering as discussed before. I opted for the Zippo lighter approach as it can be free standing when lit leaving both hands free to manipulate the wire. Light up, anneal the wire, and stretch to break - works a treat. I used to have a Zippo years back but needless to say couldn't find it anywhere. Ebay provided me one very cheaply and it came with FREE ENGRAVING. Had to put some poser text on it naturally :lol:

awemawson:
At the week end I managed to bend up the replacement sliding covers, but this time they DIDN'T get glass blasted before painting, which was what distorted them last time :bang:

I took the opportunity to slightly redesign them. The stationary 'kerbs' that restrict their movement are 8 mm deep. The covers slide on top of these kerbs and have a down turned flange that stops them passing the kerb. The originals had 8 mm down turns, which meant that not only were they resting on the kerb, but also the top of the machine and scratching the paint when they moved. I have reduced the down turn to 5.5 mm giving a theoretical 2.5 mm clearance over the top of the machine if everything is flat and true. So now (again theoretically) the covers only touch the kerbs and not the machine top. In practice so far it seems to work ok. Pity I didn't remember to re-set my corner notcher for the reduced flange - if you look at the first picture you can see the corner is more 'open' than is ideal, but never mind eh ! My 'joggler' that I made earlier came into play joggling the join between covers and worked well. I had made it originally for a 4 mm 'double joggle', but inserting strips of 2 mm aluminium on each side reduced the joggle to 2 mm very satisfactorily.

Second picture shows the slight clearance I have created between the cover and the machine top.

Perhaps now I can get down to it and start using the machine in earnest :scratch:

awemawson:
This evening I managed to tick off another 'round-tuit' : The machine came with a 'remote pendant' - basically a box of switches and lamps on an umbilical cord replicating the axis motion buttons. But as my machine was originally equipped for automatic wire threading this particular pendant abounded with a load of extra buttons and lamps relating to features no longer on the machine. The pendant had had quite a bit of its controls removed already when I got it. Presumably this happened when when the machine had automatic function removed. I also robbed some apparently redundant buttons to get the main console functional, in some cases having to make frankenmonster switches from several others :bugeye: I did at the time blank the few holes I created with grommets.

All this looked a mess, and as I now knew which functions were needed and which were redundant, having a picture of the simple control in the Operators Manual, I decided to do a 'proper job' and finish the task.

Only a case of removing surplus controls and making the wires safe with heat shrink sleeving. Amazingly as obtained there were loads of wires with bare ends just floating about. Probably their other ends are disconnected - but are they :scratch: Not good practice to leave them bare even if they are isolated elsewhere.

The pendant is quite handy when moving the table to place the wire close to the work using the Mk1 Eyeball method.

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