We strive to mill as much geometry as possible but sharp corners and very deep, narrow grooves must still be worked by electrical discharge machining (EDM).
Electrode manufacturing, which is done in graphite, is done with three NC mills. Just as with steel milling, the NC preparation and programming is done by the operators themselves in WorkNC. One of the mills, a Röders high-speed mill, forms part of a robot cell together with a robot from System 3R and a Makino sinker EDM machine. In this mill we can work both steel and graphite into electrodes, which means that we can machine the insert, mill out the electrodes, and then sinker EDM machine the insert with the associated electrodes in one and the same cell. This enables us to shorten our throughput times significantly as the robot works 24 hours a day.