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Fitting Vee Guides to the Fanuc Tapecut Model M Wire EDM

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awemawson:
So this morning I 3D-Modelled the Upper Nozzle assembly and printed a 13 percent density version to test fit. A bit of tweaking to the model which fitted fine but I had to extend one face 1.5 mm for cosmetic reasons to line up with other features.

This one was slightly more complicated as I've had to incorporate blind holes to lead the de-ionised water from the right to the left to allow the existing plumbing to (hopefully) fit.

99 percent version now printing with an hour to go. I hope that there's enough filament on the reel.

awemawson:
So today's job was (theoretically) unbolt the original diamond guides and bolt on the Vee guides in their place. But as we all know there is always at least one GOTCHA in the way.

Firstly not having previously stripped out the mounting plate for the lower guide, as it's mounting 'looked' the same I had ASSUMED that it was - wrong - different hole spacing. Also to gain the full advantage of the Vee guide over the hole type it needs to project out into free space rather than be mounted on a plate with a hole (or you still have to thread the wire though an (admittedly much bigger) hole. Time for a re-design. Initially I'd thought order up some stainless and start machining but then sense prevailed and I've drawn it up in Fusion 360 with a prototype printing as I speak.

awemawson:
Removing the upper guide assembly was just a case of removing four bolts along with the water feed and electrical connections. It is surrounded by two stainless steel splash guards that keep the upper 'U&V' servo drives dry - they were FILTHY !

Mounted on this assembly is the redundant 'wire cutter'. When made this machine had automatic threading of the wire (sheer luxury) but it was so unreliable it was removed apart from the cutter.

Had enough today - back tomorrow for more fun.

awemawson:
Today I hot pressed the M4 screw sockets into the 99% solid PetG 3D printed guide mount using a soldering iron, and then went ahead and mounted up the new Vee guide assemblies.

Doing a trial threading of the wire it was very obvious that the wire was not vertical - heart sinking moment  :bang: But  then I thought - hang on the upper mount can be controlled to set the wire to the angle you want - is in the range of movement - yes very easily. I set it vertical to my eye with very minimal movement of the U and V slides (X & Y axis for the top of the wire). So one of my measurements of the lower mounting block is obviously slightly out, but it looks like not worth re-printing as it can be adjusted out.

So once I'd wired up the contact blocks  (upper and lower) and made a couple of plumbing connectors for the de-ionised water I gave it a 'powered up' run and nothing went bang  :ddb:

Now I need to read up on using the verticallity jig to re-set the wire dead nuts on (theoretically simple - the jig has upper and lower neons that light up when the wire touches them - I've done it before but its a good ten years ago.

Meanwhile a distraction arrived. All this 3D printing reminded me that although my Cetus 3D printer has given (and is still giving) sterling service I'd always intended to upgrade to a totally enclosed machine to keep out the workshop draughts and dust. So I've bought a Bambu Labs P1S Combo - half of which arrived this morning - but I'm being very good and not touching it until I've finished the Fanuc Tapcut Wire EDM.

AdeV:

--- Quote from: awemawson on November 11, 2025, 10:40:54 AM ---So I've bought a Bambu Labs P1S Combo - half of which arrived this morning

--- End quote ---

I know nothing about the Cetus (except it's a bed-slinger, IIRC, not a core-XY), so the Bambu is going to prove to be a world apart from it. In a good way.

IIRC, the "Combo" is shipped with the AMS unit inside the printer, so it's probably all arrived, not just half of it...

I struggled to justify the price of a Bambu (plus they'd just recently announced that they were going closed-shop with their software, and that if you wanted to use all the features of the printer you had to use their online services), so I went for a Qidi Plus 4 instead. Superb machine, and now I have their equivalent of an AMS, I can do most things a Bambu can do - also slightly bigger, although the Qidi experience isn't as polished as the Bambu one...



It replaced an Ender 3, and it's just so much better I actually threw the Ender away!

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