As the UK’s largest supplier of EDM consumables, Erodex is the only company to stock every wire diameter in every reel size, with all tensile strengths and with every coating option. That amounts to around 70 line items that can be sent to customers for next day delivery. “We have enough wire in stock to reach the moon and back; and we regularly ship 30 to 40 orders a day for customers looking for reliable service and support. We provide everything for EDM users, except the machines, using a full service approach.” explains Sales Director, Steve Rolinson.
With an extensive stock of filters, electrode blanks and other consumables, the staff at the company are always willing to share their knowledge and experience with EDM users looking to improve productivity. One of the greatest performance improvements comes from using coated wire rather than plain brass during the wire cutting process. Erodex supplies the complete Bedra range of high performance coated wires that can provide an increase of up to 50 per cent cutting speed performance while maintaining the quality of the cut.
Steve Rolinson says: “For the efficient application of the wire EDM process Bedra has contributed significantly to the development of technology and production processes. With the functional coatings for wire electrodes it has developed, an enormous increase in material removal performance, and hence in productivity, can be achieved. Moreover, a reproducible high precision and surface quality is attained.”
Erodex highlight the high-tech, universal Topas Plus wire cutting range that has been developed as a high speed cutting wire. Combining an excellent price-performance ratio for applications on all standard EDM machines, this range can significantly improve productivity compared to brass wire.
The Topas Plus range offers different zinc coating levels on the core of the wire to suit the various EDM machines available. “Between the core and the coating is another layer called the Gamma Phase area that energizes the material difference between the core and the zinc to give a much more powerful spark. The enriched zinc coating on a copper, steel or brass core fractures to provide an increased surface area for the spark, which increases the cutting speed,” Steve Rolinson states.
In recent wire cutting tests held at Warwick Machine Tools showroom in Kenilworth, the Megacut Plus range was benchmarked on an Excetek Wire Cut machine against standard brass wire and provided a 20 per cent increase in the cutting speed. This was achieved with no alterations made to the machine’s cutting technology. “We were impressed by the initial results,” says WMT’s Managing Director, Ian Holbeche. “So we approached an existing customer with the findings and conducted further tests on an Excetek V850 machine installed on the shopfloor. The results were remarkable, in a production environment with operators that have an in-depth knowledge of the machine you can tweak the parameters and we achieved a 50 per cent increase in cutting speed, even during complex profile cutting.”
Erodex provide EDM users with a cost comparison spreadsheet that will calculate the savings that could be achieved by using these new generation coated wire. Steve Rolinson concludes: “Of course the coated wire is more expensive initially. However, if you can increase the throughput of the machine tool by between 20 and 50 per cent the business efficiency gains far outweigh the additional cost of the consumable wire.”
For more information on topas wire or any of the Berkenhoff range, please click here.
