News Ecut

Digging a plate to get the seat of dowels is a basic processing in the executions of moulds.
Of any kind they are, for sheet metal, plastic, or die-casting, the execution of extensive quarries, especially when the depth ‘begins to become high, engages large machines and expensive tools.
Often they are not sophisticated and expensive machines, but for this reason they need the presence of the operator. And the operators themselves are almost always expensive.

The decomposition into two plates, one at the bottom and one for the quarry, allows the use of wire erosion, but only by having one, there, ‘firm and unused.
In many companies, where there is wire EDM, sometimes it is done, without paying too much attention to the costs, and with many limitations.
The dimensions of the plate are not always in the machine tank.
If the thickness to be cut is more than 150 mm, the machines that can process it begin to decrease, and those that can do so cost more.
The hourly cost of operation, (brass wire, distilled water, resins, filter cartridges, etc.), is justified for work with high demands for precision and finish, but for the execution of a simple quarry, they are often prohibitive.

E.cut does not work by immersion, so the plates can also “come out” of the pallet.
The maximum thickness that can be cut starts from 300 mm for the smallest machines, up to 500 / 600 mm for the largest ones.
The wire is not “disposable”, and flows at a speed of 100 times higher than a normal wire erosion. No demineralized water, no ion exchange resins, no filter cartridges are needed.
The hourly management costs are 10 times lower, not exceeding 0,40 €/hour.
At a speed of more than 600 mt/min, against the 8 mt/min of a wire erosion, the wire “cleans itself”, eliminating the annoying barrel effect.
The walls can be parallel, or inclined, and with the same simplicity with which a rectangular quarry is carried out, quarries can be carried out with any profile.
The contours to be cut can be generated directly on the machine through the CAM part of the CNC, which is entered directly in DXF format.

The difficulties in machining spring steel by removal are well known, and always faced with reluctance.

When it is absolutely necessary, usually when samples or small series of pieces are required, the final costs are high and the results unsatisfactory, both because of the difficulty of maintaining precision, and because the machining operations (drilling, milling, turning, ..) “stress” the material to such an extent as to compromise the final functionality.

The solution often adopted is cutting with conventional wire EDM. Often it is the only solution but the cost limits its adoption considerably.

Ecut technology opens up completely new possibilities.

The extremely low hourly operating cost (more than ten times lower than that of conventional wire EDM) is the most important factor.

If in fact cutting a pack of 50 discs of 50mm diameter with conventional wire erosion costs (*) around 60 euros, with Ecut does not exceed 6 euros!

Two other factors are important.

The first is that Ecut technology does not cause surface and micro cracks (absolutely forbidden in various sectors, such as aeronautics, X-rays, etc.) which are particularly harmful in the case of springs.

The second is that even the smallest model of Ecut can cut thicknesses up to 300 mm. Clearly, the springs are only a few millimetres thick, but such a large thickness of cut allows you to work “columns” of hundreds of pieces at a stroke, further reducing the cost, and also making interesting the execution of a few thousand pieces without having to deal with the construction of moulds.

(*) hourly cost of operation = cost of depreciation + tool cost + cost of wear and tear parts and consumption + cost of maintenance