Our EDM department has seven sinker EDM machines in varying sizes from the smallest to the largest with a machining area of 1800×1000 mm.
One of the sinker EDM machines, a Makino, forms part of a robot cell together with a robot from System 3R and a Röders high-speed milling machine. As described under “Electrode manufacturing”, in this robot cell we can machine the insert, mill 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.