Titanium can be a challenge sometimes, but how about a part with tight tolerances that moves like an accordion! The photo shows an EDM Aerospace Titanium part that has thin .026" walls. Designed to flex,  it was carefully cut  forming all the thin walls you see, and measured out beautifully. Our Titanium cutting is done on the latest Agie Charmilles machines that are made for titanium. Our generator settings are set to eliminate the bluing effect from older EDM Machines with the latest digital generators. As a matter of fact, our Agie Charmilles equipment is the only Aerospace EDM equipment approved by Pratt and Whitney!.  Give us a call or send a drawing at the FAST QUOTE above!  We are always cutting difficult or odd materials in challenging industries like medical and aeor

Preloading your EDM parts is accomplished using an extensive assortment of 3R Tooling. For 14 years we have built our tooling base to quickly fixture and cut parts without needless setup times. Shown to the left is part of one preload station. The part is mounted in a variable precision holder that is mounted on a granite block via the identical dovetail it will see in all of our machines. This way the part is indicated in with the precision adjustments on the tooling in all planes while it is out of the machine... When the part is indicated flat and parallel outside the machine, no valuable machine time is taken for setup. The part leaves the preload station when the machine is ready, mounts in seconds and the EDM machine is immediately running.  No costly machine time wasted to indicate parts in.

This gear request had a stub tooth at every other tooth location. We have traditional gear shaping and gear hobbing, but it would be time consuming to cut all of the teeth and then perhaps fixture and mill off the stub teeth.  With our wire EDM's, we are able to cut any time of partial gear cutaway as the teeth themselves are being cut. No extra cutting, no waste, time and money sav

We frequently are asked about cutting titanium. We've made parts for NDT (non destructive testing) as well as aerospace parts requiring precision tolerances and surface finishes. For EDM  information, refer to our article EDM and Titanium. As for machining, the best results come with most of the tools having a sharp edge and surface finish. Generally cutting speeds are low and our feeds are as course as possible, requiring proper tool geometry. Sometimes the geometry of the tooling will inherently create increased tool loads and work piece deflections. Because titanium as a lower elastic modulus, these deflections are greater than what we would see on a steel workpiece.  We use various high speed steels and tungsten carbide inserts.  We avoid some of the titanium pitfalls involving titanium chips welding to the cutting surface of the tool by climb milling, where the cutting tool tooth finishes the stroke of cut when moving parallel to the feed. Making sure the part  is properly clamped to avoid any kind of vibration or chatter is critical to our machining too.  EDM'ing Titanium has various settings specific to titanium. The biggest asset we have in EDM burning titanium is the ability to have custom burn parameters for the EDM with the latest digital EDM generators to eliminate the heat and 'bluing' effect (see the link to EDM and machining technical article).
Titanium is not a bad material to machine; the trick is knowing one of the twists that this aerospace alloy can throw at you!

Digitized and Wire EDM'd 4 axis of Atlanta skyline.    

Being a machine shop in Atlanta, we thought it  fitting ito machine out of Stainless steel the Atlanta Skyline... We took this photograph of the Atlanta Skyline, digitized it, and made a four axis part from it. Notice that the back face for the part is a sunrise, while the front of the part you see clearly is the skyline as represented in the photo behind it. The 4-Axis software allows us to cut completely different shapes on the two faces at the same time. So as the top of the wire cuts the skyline, the bottom part cust the sun. What you have in between are the sun's rays. You can see the Georgia Capitol with it's gold dome in the middle of the photo we scanned. The material we used was Stainless steel, 17-4 PH.   We talk a lot about being an Atlanta machine shop as we serve all of Metro Atlanta, but the actual shop is in Tucker, just outside of  Interstate 285

ISO9001:2008

The ISO9001:2008 Plaque is in, so it's official for another couple of years! ...Sometimes we hear people say that ISO is just all paperwork and a waste of time... Here is an interesting story that really quantifies what ISO is about... , We were running a production job that by procedure had to fixture a tricky-orientation group of parts on a pallet in mid-process. Everyone knew the potential problem but instead of nodding our heads and agreeing that we'll never make THAT mistake,  we made a simple, pinned fixture to check orientation of loaded blanks in the pallet before the process began.
After 3 years of making the part, vacation put a newer machinist on the job. The pallett was loaded with the expensive in process parts, and the pallett verification that was in our procedure that he had to sign off on failed, before the part was run!   This in-process check saved over $9000.00 in scrapped aerospace parts, not to mention saving about 4 weeks worth of would-be delay to our customer. ISO WORKS!, and we're proud of our system.
 

Holiday Extrusions    

Some EDM work that is a little different. These were extrusions made for the holiday. These were made with 6" tall 6061 aluminum and  some of these have as many as 11 different pieces (like a puzzle) through the 6" tall material. The basket with the bow that is the leftmost part shown has 10 different components...The bow is made of 5 pieces, the eggs and the basket are two each and the background of the basket is one for a total of 10.

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We've been using Esprit software http://www.dptechnology.com by DP technology for over 14years. One of the keys to efficent output is to have a powerful CAM that allows us to take 2D or 3D models and quickly put code on the CNC machines.But that is not where the story stops. If you think of a road trip in a 4-cylinder minivan, you'll most likely get to your destination, but board your 458 Farrari Italia and make the same road trip -chances are you will not only get there in style, but will get there much faster! That is the Power of KnowledgeBase machining that we use with our CNC programming and Esprit. KnowledgeBase gives us the power to leverage our shop's most important strategic asset: the machining practices we've developed over the years. We literally have a push-button approach to determine the best method to machine a given part or feature by automatically choosing machining cycles, machining parameters or cutting tools. Why reinvent the wheel each time when the collective history can be at your fingertips? All of this efficency and speed translates to more productivity and better value for our customers.

We were asked to cut a thin sliver of a rare meteorite...(by cutting with the EDM's small kerf, the maximum amount of meteorite was preserved.)  The actual part left the shop without a photo but the meteorite shown to the left was given to us a thank you from the local museum.
The first challenge to Wire EDM a meteorite is the lact of conductivity of the outer layer which is an iron oxide.  The second challenge is holding the varying outer surface solidly (not exactly a ground block of A2 tool steel). 
Thirdly, EDM's rely heavily on proper flushing. We seal the top and bottom of our parts with the upper and lower heads, then inject high pressure water. This high pressure pushes particles out during the cutting process. Without it, the machine can slow down and break wires.  Our new technology approach to EDM equipmeent gives us the variable controls to maximize the cutting speed especially in a part with a jagged outer surface that is next to impossible to seal...Older technology machines probably would have struggled trying to create this part, but using some of our proprietary technologies we are able to cut this part effectively and efficiently. Our group can provide a quotation fast...goto FAST QUOTE for a quotation for you parts.