Wire EDM expert

Just for fun, I look at metal machinery near me on Ebay and put in low bids.

I'm now the proud new owner of a wire EDM. Its 10 miles from me.

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Anybody know much about these? I've had a sinker for several years.

Reply to
Karl Townsend
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"Karl Townsend" wrote in message news:JXO7h.674$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread4.news.pas.earthlink.net...

It appears to be a machine built around the time that Charmilles bought Andrew. If I'm right about that, there may be ten people who aren't retired yet who know a lot about them.

I'll give you a name of the one guy alive who could tune you in to every experienced operator of Andrew machines still left standing: Terry Bryce. I don't know where he is now, but my guess is that he owns a machinery sales company in or around Minneapolis.

Tell him I sent you, if you find him. And have fun with your new machine.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

The company he worked for in '91 is still in business. I see he published in the same magazine as I see your name in at that time. Also, there are three fellas with the same name in Minnesota. One is 64, I think I'll give him a cold call.

I refit CNC controls as a hobby. I actually spend more time doing this than I spend making metal parts. (My son is a CNC machine shop supervisor, he's so much better/faster that I just gave up)

In your opinion, would a wire machine of this vintage be worthy of a new control? The application would be mostly for making compression molds, nothing with extreme tolerance requirements.

Karl

Reply to
Karl Townsend

Ooooohh! Can you make gears with that?

Reply to
Don Foreman

I'm sure. You can cut any shape that can somehow be carved out with a straight line. The material can be too hard to machine, inside corners and draft angles are its specialty.

P.S. My gear hobber project is really overdue for this winter. Installation of this new machine and having to remanufacture a section of my packing line may, once again, move it back.

Too many projects, too little time. If I didn't spend so much time fishing I would get more done. But then, I've decided to measure how good my year was by how much time I spent fishing; not by how much I made or how much I worked.

Karl

Reply to
Karl Townsend

--Hey Karl where's home for you? I've got a job for that wire edm machine of yours... ;-)

Reply to
steamer

Beautiful Dassel, Minnesota.

"The Kid" got home about an hour ago. He knows the shop the machine is in and the guy running it. Jacob gives the shop a lot of work. He's certain the machine is still in good running shape. Looks like I made a good buy.

What do you need? I guess I'm looking for a first job.

Karl

Reply to
Karl Townsend

Workholding tools for wire EDMs can get pretty fancy (read:expensive). The fixtures support virtually no dynamic load and wired parts tend to be pretty small (die buttons, for instance) - and of course everything is stainless steel as deionized water is typically used.

Building proper tools would make for some excellent projects, once the machine is running.

Regards,

Robin

Reply to
Robin S.

"Karl Townsend" wrote in message news:su_7h.723$ snipped-for-privacy@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...

It would be worthy, but I have no idea how practical it would be. Early CNCs for edms, both wire and sinker, were often dedicated to the machine because of the way servo action was shared between the power supply and the CNC. Some were too specialized to replace in any practical way.

I wouldn't know which ones were like this or not.

Someone mentioned cutting gears, so let me caution you about one thing: Early wirecut CNC programs for cutting involute gears were pretty crude. I don't know about the Charmilles/Andrew, but some, like the early Sodicks, required special software that produced an approximation of an involute by blending a relatively small number of circular arcs.

In any case, Andrew wirecut machines were pretty neat little machines for their day, and I hope you get a lot of good use out of it. They pioneered a lot of early EDM ideas, and they had a wirecut attachment for sinker machines before CNC was around. I don't recall if the Andrew setup was a tracer or if it was just limited to straight cuts. There were a few such contraptions on the market before Agie flipped the diemaking world on its ear with their first wirecut CNC in 1971, IIRC. But Agie did not *invent* the wirecut process.

Good luck reaching Terry. He knows everybody. I think he was a VP at Andrew Engineering before Charmilles bought them. He also was the guy who got Mitsubishi started in the US, back around '78.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

It would be worthy, but I have no idea how practical it would be. Early CNCs for edms, both wire and sinker, were often dedicated to the machine because of the way servo action was shared between the power supply and the CNC. Some were too specialized to replace in any practical way.

I wouldn't know which ones were like this or not.

Someone mentioned cutting gears, so let me caution you about one thing: Early wirecut CNC programs for cutting involute gears were pretty crude. I don't know about the Charmilles/Andrew, but some, like the early Sodicks, required special software that produced an approximation of an involute by blending a relatively small number of circular arcs.

In any case, Andrew wirecut machines were pretty neat little machines for their day, and I hope you get a lot of good use out of it. They pioneered a lot of early EDM ideas, and they had a wirecut attachment for sinker machines before CNC was around. I don't recall if the Andrew setup was a tracer or if it was just limited to straight cuts. There were a few such contraptions on the market before Agie flipped the diemaking world on its ear with their first wirecut CNC in 1971, IIRC. But Agie did not *invent* the wirecut process.

Good luck reaching Terry. He knows everybody. I think he was a VP at Andrew Engineering before Charmilles bought them. He also was the guy who got Mitsubishi started in the US, back around '78.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

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