Desktop EDM machine

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EDM and water jet are two technologies that if made practical would change the Maker landscape.

I never heard of Gridfinity… interesting.

@donkjr that Gridfinity should have been it’s own post. Cool stuff.

Gridfinity will work for you @donkjr since it’s based on F360. I’ve instead focused my effort on Freegrid which is in FreeCAD so it is open source, soup to nuts. Just in the past couple weeks I saw that someone posted an OpenSCAD module for gridfinity though.

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OK, so this is basically an inexpensive EDM power supply which to be fair is the hardest part. :smiley:

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I’d seen wire based EDM projects so while I was watching I was looking, and hoping, it wasn’t a wire since that seemed to make the whole thing a bit more complicated as more ‘stuff’ was in the tub. Seemed quite impressive how few mods to the 3D printer were required.

Like 3D printing, if EDM takes off I can see someone coming up with really innovative uses/solutions using it.

I don’t think I can link to a comment, but quoting the designer:

The specs for the Powercore are simple: 72 Volts, and it comes pre-programmed for 2 Khz with a 80% duty cycle. Those settings are optimized for cutting aluminum. We do not recommend using steel or titanium yet. Thin aluminum is recommended because it minimizes the required water flushing. With a wire mechanism, and good flushing, you should be able to machine much thicker aluminum. We have not tried this yet. However, Dominik Meffert has used a similar power supply design (60 volts, 2 Khz, 80% duty cycle) to do wire EDM.

The fastest we have cut thin aluminum (0.5 mm) is 15 mm / min. We generally stick to 8 to 10 mm / min. Cuts succeed 50% to 80% of the time. We use a 1/16" brass electrode (1.5 mm). We have a gcode post processor to compensate for electrode wear by moving the electrode down as the cut progresses. With this method, you can cut a length of 800 mm of aluminum with 40 mm of brass rod.

Given that my interest would be more steel than aluminum, I think I’ll pass…

steel and SS are possible but here’s a wire version which still needed some work:

Since you have a CNC machine @mcdanlj this design might be of interest.

The FAQs said that the power supply voltage was fixed, and chosen for aluminum, which was what I was referring to.

And yeah, wire EDM seems more interesting.

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