Wire Erosion Services

Wire erosion is a highly accurate engineering process for cutting and removing metals. At A&M, we perform high quality wire cutting for any conductive materials, such as titanium, aluminium and tungsten carbide.

We have 30 Sodick EDM machines and an innovative approach to programming to load multiple jobs on machines, pushing the equipment to achieve its full potential.

We can import CAD files from all well-known file extensions

Our largest wire cutting dimension is 1200 x 800 x 400 mm and 4 tons in weight, with a 500mm Z Axis option.

Our latest machines use an integrated cooling system to maintain the table and machine casting system ensuring optimum machining accuracy.

Most of our machines have Sodick’s jumbo wire feeder technology, which allows us to cut pieces for up to 60 hours, we can also slow the speed of the wire to achieve close to 80 hours.

Sodick Taper Flex technology enables us to cut taper angles with greater precision.

To confirm to our NADCAP aerospace certification, all our wire and spark eroders are calibrated annually.

This helps maintain cutting speeds and accuracy and is overseen by our in-house maintenance engineer.

Programming Multiple Jobs

All our wirers have the wire threading for multiple aperture parts enabling us to programme multiple jobs.

Our standard cutting brass wire is 0.25mm and we have the option of going to 0.15mm for smaller pieces.

A&M’s wire eroders are programmed to wire cut multiple complex jobs, enabling lights out operation overnight with staff operating multiple machines, delivering speed, precision and commercial value to customers.

One of our longest achievements was wire eroding a prototype beryllium component for a nuclear customer; this took 11 weeks on one of the largest Sodick machines in Europe.

Wire Erosion Services

Examples Include:

Wire EDM Programming

Wire EDM Programming to change the tooling in the manufacture of an aerospace component. We expanded this project from one wire EDM machine to four spark and four wire machines, manufacturing thousands of parts weekly.

 

Precision Cutting

Wire EDM ensures precision when cutting complex shapes and hard materials which would be difficult with conventional cutting tools, such as pieces 500mm thick.

Tight Tolerances

We use wire erosion to remove the material build up on additive manufactured aerospace parts which require critical, tight tolerances.

Exemplar Status

Sodick, our EDM machine supplier, regularly send new customers to A&M, using us as an exemplar in achieving the greatest speed and accuracy from their machines.

Wire Erosion Frequently Asked Questions

Wire EDM is a branch of Electrical Discharge Machining which utilises a wire to cut a metal workpiece. The wire EDM process consists of a strand of wire, which acts as an electrical conductor, generating electrical sparks between itself and a metal workpiece. Wire EDM works without relying on contact between the tooling and workpiece; the electrical discharge is able to erode and cut the workpiece as the spark jumps between the wire and the workpiece. Typically, dielectric deionised water is used to conduct the electricity and moreover cool the tooling and workpiece during the process, washing away excess particles of the eroded workpiece.