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Wire EDM - high dielectric conductance


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Well. Just put in new filters in our water tank and a new DI resin canister, and the water is still waaaay too conductive. As in only marginally less conductive than our tap water. Not sure what else we can do at this point, given how much crap is in the air and the fact that management chose to put it right next to a furnace in the dustiest corner of the shop. Reading about 1.1MΩ/cm in the tank, and our tap water is about 1.0MΩ/cm. According to everything I've found we should be getting 3-5MΩ/cm in the conditioned water.

 

So my question is, how badly will this hamper the EDM performance? Not getting a ton of false wire breaks (still a few), but only managing to get up to about .12IPM in hardened 495B steel, about 5/8" thick. Open clearance on top, close on bottom, submerged machining, .008" brass wire.

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I have a Sodick wire as well, and like you, we are in the learning phase.

3-5MΩ/cm or higher is what Sodick recommends. The consequence of poor water condition is a less focused discharge resulting in longer cycletimes( and rusty parts).

As far as speeds go, I'm cutting 5" thick steel with great flushing and only getting about 0.030 IPM feed rate.

I'm finding it's very difficult to find any good sources of information on the EDM process! Good Luck!

J

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4 hours ago, Ewood42 said:

Well. Just put in new filters in our water tank and a new DI resin canister, and the water is still waaaay too conductive. As in only marginally less conductive than our tap water. Not sure what else we can do at this point, given how much crap is in the air and the fact that management chose to put it right next to a furnace in the dustiest corner of the shop. Reading about 1.1MΩ/cm in the tank, and our tap water is about 1.0MΩ/cm. According to everything I've found we should be getting 3-5MΩ/cm in the conditioned water.

 

So my question is, how badly will this hamper the EDM performance? Not getting a ton of false wire breaks (still a few), but only managing to get up to about .12IPM in hardened 495B steel, about 5/8" thick. Open clearance on top, close on bottom, submerged machining, .008" brass wire.

Are you certain that the resin is cycling? Bad resin tank? Are the in and out hoses hooked up correctly?

If water is that conductive it should alarm out on you as a short.

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8 minutes ago, jaydenn said:

I have a Sodick wire as well, and like you, we are in the learning phase.

3-5MΩ/cm or higher is what Sodick recommends. The consequence of poor water condition is a less focused discharge resulting in longer cycletimes( and rusty parts).

As far as speeds go, I'm cutting 5" thick steel with great flushing and only getting about 0.030 IPM feed rate.

I'm finding it's very difficult to find any good sources of information on the EDM process! Good Luck!

J

I recommend going to some training for the Sodick.

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42 minutes ago, Del. said:

Are you certain that the resin is cycling? Bad resin tank? Are the in and out hoses hooked up correctly?

If water is that conductive it should alarm out on you as a short.

I was having issues with shorts, but got rid of them by screwing with the power parameters. Had to drop the feed to about a third of what the control output, increased duration of duty cycle, and slightly increased ratio of off to on time to allow more of the crap to blow out of the cut. Also had to tweak the MAO setting... but, no more shorts at least, Just painfully slow cutting.

After messing with it this morning, it does not look like the resin is cycling. Not sure on whether it's plumbed up correctly though, the EDM supply rep hooked it up for us when dropping off the tanks a couple weeks back, and when I switched it after refilling the tank I just matched up to how the previous tank was hooked up (labeled in/out). Going to have Sodick send us a proper manual for the machine, but given the pace that non-standard POs move through upstairs, it might be a while.

Came down this morning to find some electrical contractors we have in the building set up a cutting/bending station right next to the EDM... and they were blowing their dust all over the EDM. Oh well, at least nobody has tried adding salt to the tank yet. :rofl:

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1 minute ago, Ewood42 said:

I was having issues with shorts, but got rid of them by screwing with the power parameters. Had to drop the feed to about a third of what the control output, increased duration of duty cycle, and slightly increased ratio of off to on time to allow more of the crap to blow out of the cut. Also had to tweak the MAO setting... but, no more shorts at least, Just painfully slow cutting.

After messing with it this morning, it does not look like the resin is cycling. Not sure on whether it's plumbed up correctly though, the EDM supply rep hooked it up for us when dropping off the tanks a couple weeks back, and when I switched it after refilling the tank I just matched up to how the previous tank was hooked up (labeled in/out). Going to have Sodick send us a proper manual for the machine, but given the pace that non-standard POs move through upstairs, it might be a while.

Came down this morning to find some electrical contractors we have in the building set up a cutting/bending station right next to the EDM... and they were blowing their dust all over the EDM. Oh well, at least nobody has tried adding salt to the tank yet. :rofl:

Tweaking the SV (servo voltage) acts like a brake when having shorts along the path. Decreasing the number makes it move faster and increasing it slows it down for a more stable cut.

Take the hose off your resin tank on the OUT valve and see if water is coming out. If not they are backwards.

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5 hours ago, Robert Ouellette said:

After changing the resin did you let it run for a few hours so it would have time to filter and bring it down? Our old brother had to be started up a day before i needed it to condition the water before i could use it. Its not instant.

 

Yeah, I let it run for almost 8 hours with fill tank and both high/low flushing turned on... Tried to tell them that with as much as it leaks and the fact that we need to frequently top off water we should have plumbed up an extra resin tank in line with the fill hose for the machine to pre-condition the water. I hear that's something a lot of shops will do for filling their tanks from tap water.

 

Now if only the water line they ran down to machine actually had fittings on the end of it and wasn't just a bare copper pipe...:huh: We're in the midst of expanding the shop, so the back half of the building we were previously sharing with another company is only half finished, even though we've already moved several machines down there. Had to cart the water down 10 gallons at a time in buckets to fill the tank.

 

20 hours ago, Del. said:

Take the hose off your resin tank on the OUT valve and see if water is coming out. If not they are backwards.

Well there's the problem... dry. Switched them, still dry. Sodick told me the water is not always circulated through the tank, it is a function run by the controller. So now I'm wondering if it is just not routing through there due to something screwy with the control. Sensor is clean, and gives a similar reading to a multi-meter I brought in yesterday. 

 

There are a bunch of once-labeled switches and dials on the pump/filter setup, almost illegibly marked as "xxxxx ADJ". Sounds like I need to wait on getting a manual, so I can just RTFM and sort it out on my own.

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On 2/23/2018 at 2:16 PM, htm01 said:

we never use tap water, reverse osmosis

We don't either.

We buy what amounts to purified drinking water.

Last place I worked we bought it in the big jugs that go on water coolers. They even threw in a free water cooler.:D

If your water isn't filtered, it's full of solid particles, a large amount of those particle are conductive.

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Just now, Del. said:

I just use tap water. We would go broke buying deionized water. Secret is not to wait too long to add water.  My tanks combined hold over 500 gallons of water.

We never bought it already deionized. Just filtered to get the chucks out.

But up here we have a ton of iron in most water supplies.

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Well. DI pump is shot. Either not getting power or the pump is just burned up. Made sure the range to turn on the pump was set correctly, then slowly unscrewed the hoses from the tank while the pumps were running. Nothing, not a drop.

Had a knowledgeable EDM sales rep who happened to be in the area stop by and repeat all the troubleshooting I went through, and verified the problem. As I discovered last week with my multimeter, the water in the tank is only marginally less conductive than our tap water. Might explain the painfully slow cuts I've been seeing.

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22 minutes ago, g huns said:

Well that, and the fact it's a wire EDM machine.:lol:

Oh I know I shouldn't ever expect anything much above .15-.2 IPM with what we're doing, but fastest I've been able to get it to run since the pump quit working is .06 IPM. Cutting 1/8" aluminum the other day I got it up to a blazing fast .12 IPM.

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16 hours ago, Del. said:

I just use tap water. We would go broke buying deionized water. Secret is not to wait too long to add water.  My tanks combined hold over 500 gallons of water.

medical extrusion side has a machine so we can get all we need

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