Link

Repo on the CBA Gitlab

Will Langford

In the past few weeks I’ve been thinking about how to make a desktop wire-EDM. Now it’s made…

At the center of the machine is the wire feed mechanism I made in a prior week. It’s responsible for controlling the wire speed and tension.

The wire passes through a few pulleys before presenting the cutting length of wire to the workpiece. The wire is then sent back over the feed mechansim and onto a take-up spool.

One technique I wanted to try out in this design was the use of tapered plugs to contrain the shafts in the plate. This was inspired by Dan Gelbart who has an awesome series of fabrication related videos. The design worked okay… I think with another iteration of tweaking parameters it would constrain them more rigidly. For now it is completely sufficient for this application but may not stand up to hammer blows.

Nadya kindly let me use one of her fancy steppers with an integrated leadscrew. The 8mm of travel per rotation might be slightly large for my application but I think the best way to verify that is by testing it.

More information coming…

Repo on the CBA Gitlab