Recent Postings

There is a new development from Makino’s R&D engineers that I would like to tell you a little about.  Its called “Pico Precision Wire Guide System”.  This a new offering on SP and Uj series machines, and can be ordered from the factory or retrofitted to existing installed machines.  The Pico Guide System was designed to provide reliable, flawless threading of small holes in a tight matrix, or for highly accurate cutting of variable taper lands for stamping tooling.  This allows Makino to offer the only real “choice” in wire guide systems on a WEDM.  We will still offer, and believe that our standard Split V-Guide system is best for about 80% of WEDM work today, and will still offer this tried and true system. 

What kind of wire guide system do you use, and what problems have you had? Post comments or email me at jkiszonas@makino.com.

We were posed with a good question the other day - Why does Makino EDM take such interest in aerospace?

We have a long history of working with the aerospace industry.  As a supplier to all tiers of aerospace manufacturing, we have provided machine tools, spindles, machining centers, customized machines, turnkey systems, and part processing development to this industry.  It was only natural for us to want to help bring the aerospace community the latest information available concerning the use of EDM in manufacturing parts for critical aeronautical and aerospace applications.  

If today’s EDM machines leave little or no recast, HAZ, micro-cracking, or change in surface hardness, then secondary operations after EDMing, like milling or grinding, can be eliminated.  This would mean that the aerospace industry could now change their restrictive usage specifications for EDM that date from the 1970’s, and reduce time and expense related to these secondary operations.

Concerning the aerospace testing Makino has undertaken, if there are any shops out there that would like to specific tests regards materials and test types, please contact me to discuss specifics.

We are planning on testing some more alloys, including Inconel, and also expand testing to RAM EDMs as well.  If you would like to have a copy of the NADCAP Certified test results, send me an email, and I will send you an electronic copy. 

We want to help everyone in the aerospace industry by showing that the EDM process today can be used reliably and safely, without the need for secondary operations to remove damaged material, compared to the process equipment available even as late as 15 years ago.

If surface finish is the name of the game in your EDM world, SurfaceWIZARD is definately something you should look into. We have a webinar coming up this Thursday discussing the topic.

Register to attend at www.makino.com/events today!

As you may or may not know, I presented a webinar on www.makino.com last July concerning the effects of the EDM process on surface integrity of titanium.  The data and photo micrographs were supplied courtesy of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics.  Based on the test results that LMA provided to Makino, we decided to do some of our own testing.  These tests included 1, 2, and 3 pass machining on aluminum, stainless steel, and titanium, with brass and coated wires.  Metallurgical tests performed included recast layer and HAZ thickness, micro-cracking, and micro hardness of the various samples.  The results we saw were pretty amazing!  Check it out for yourself here. 

I wanted to let you all know that there will be a change coming in the format of this blog. Until now, it has been pretty much devoted to HEAT. From now on, this will be more of a general EDM blog. I will be posting topics related to HEAT, Surface Wizard, new technology developments, and customer success stories. Enjoy the new format and new site, www.EDMmatters.com!

We had a request for some images illustrating SurfaceWIZARD, so here you go.

This diagram illustrates the flatness that can be achieved with SurfaceWIZARD in two machining passes.

This sample part shows how SurfaceWIZARD virtually eliminates lines at transition points.