industrial EDM machines at home

[pogo]

I have been thinking about building a EDM machine as outlined in Langois' "Build an EDM," but this seems too small for what I want to do for a part time business.

I have been looking at those small sinker EDM machines on Ebay for a couple months now.

Is there a site or discussion board (other than the CAD-CAM-DRO-EDM board? that discusses the use of these machines in a non-industrial environment?

[msrm]

I'm curious, what kind of business do you
plan on that isn't industrial in nature and
uses Sinkers? I'm around the sinkers at
work and it is very interesting to see them
work. The one draw back that I see in sinking is making the electrodes. Go to
www.machineryvalues.com (http://www.machineryvalues.com) to see some older but
very nice sinkers. Also, the type of work and accuracy required will dictate the cost
of a used EDM. A small Hansvedt (table top
machine basically) isn't to bad in price but
you can find older ELOX or XLO sinkers also
for a reasonable price 5,000 dollar and up.
The key element in making electrodes is this:
Any surface imperfection no matter how minor
on the electrode can stick out like a sore
thumb on the finished material. You then need a accurate milling machine,surface grind
ing and lathe to prep the electrodes. the
requirements go on and on. I'll look around
for websites for EDM Magazines maybe that will help you. I'll try to post the websites
in a day or so. The name of a magazine for
EDM is "EDM Digest" I don't remember the
publisher. I hope I haven't overstated the
obvious and helped.

[trap]

Sometime during the next month I will be returning to Hansveth territory. I know several employees there and would be glad to ask them any questions you might have.

[Herb W]

Pogo
There's an EDM forum at the Practical Machinist site http://www.practicalmachinist.com
Fairly new & not very active yet but worth a try.
Herb

[msrm]

One of the publication websites is
www.edmtoday.org (http://www.edmtoday.org) I typed in edm publications
for a search and got about 9000 items.
good luck.

[pogo]

Thanks for the leads. I was barking up the wrong tree in my web searches.

Thanks, Trap. I am not at the point where I can ask specific questions.

I am toying with the idea of making the difficult cuts on 1911 receiver blanks, AR receiver forgings, or bolt action blanks with an EDM. At least one of the commercial enterprises doing this with a broach is clearly banking on their name - unacceptable quality.

These would not be finished to the level of a nearly complete receiver and still would be classified as an odd chunk of metal. And yes, I would be following the letter of the law on this one.

There seems to be a screaming need for this in my little corner on the web. The existing companies doing this charge more than acceptable, with slow deliveries, or poor quality.

I am nearly clueless about workshop/production level EDM, but it seems to be the best way to do this with regards to quality and cost-effectiveness. Still just thinking about it in these long evenings after work.

[msrm]

Pogo, another to mention about EDM, specifi-
cally the dielectric fluid used. The fluid
itself will cause rapid rusting of the part
that has been edmed. At work they even use
the best rust inhibitor for edm operations
and the parts still rust. The die blocks
that are edmed are ground afterwards so the
light rust doesn't matter. If you are work-
ing with firearms then the rust does become
factor and one more added expense for manu-
facturing.

[pogo]

Thanks, msrm.

I recall those problems you mentioned here and on the other thread, but they went in one ear and out the other.

Kinda like OSHA safety precautions - any hazard in Mom's or a bureaucrat's mind is blown out of proportion.