User Panel
Posted: 4/21/2024 1:23:23 PM EDT
Watching some coverage of RMRRF and this do dad caught my eye. The company is Rack Robotics and they make a set up to turn your 3D printer into a wire EDM machine. That seems really cool. I hope some stand alone videos come out so I can learn more. I hope it could be useful for Arfcom related things.
Rack Robotics |
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Carpe diem - Seize the day
Carpe per diem - Seize the expense check |
Interested.
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The hardest part about a zombie apocalypse will be pretending I'm not excited.
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I just came into this forum to ask which specific Ender 3 models are 24V, because that's what Rack's new v2.0 system requires.
My CR-10S is a 12V system or else I'd convert it and build a Voron. |
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Intresting, but as someone that runs wedm machines professionally, I am very unsettled by the visible lack of many fundamental wedm machine componets. I will have to look in to this more later.
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Happy to see that it will be open sourced.
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Tennessee Squire
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This caught my eye last night while scrolling tiktok. I'm trying to think of a need to justify it. We regularly send things out for wire EDM work at my job, but that's all larger stuff that this wouldn't handle and wouldn't be accurate enough for. It may work well for a mag well on a 0%.
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Vidi Vici Veni
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Rack Robotics also has a 1/16' brass electrode, EDM holder, for 3D printers posted on Printables:
https://www.printables.com/model/411361-edm-cartridge-electrical-discharge-machining |
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Originally Posted By PiGood: Intresting, but as someone that runs wedm machines professionally, I am very unsettled by the visible lack of many fundamental wedm machine componets. I will have to look in to this more later. View Quote What's missing? I've heard of systems that automatically burn pilot holes and feed the wire through them, catch it on the other side, and start it on the takeup spool. That would be nice, but not knowing how it's done, I can't imagine how much it would add to the cost to do that on a home hobbyist machine. |
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So from a professional machines standpoint on Wire EDM there is a lot of fundamental components you will find on all WEDM machines.
The ones they are missing. 1. High pressure flushing pumps. - They clear the eroded material from the cut, the quicker you get the material out of the cut the faster you can go. 2. Filters. - You are reusing the water, so you need to filter out the eroded material before you recycle it. If you don't not only will it plug up the system, the particulate will mess with your conductivity between the part and the wire and thus your cut speed/efficiency as you cut. 3. De Ionizer System - This combined with the filters helps you maintain the resistance level in the water, otherwise you pretty much have no control of your arc gap as you cut. 4. Tension system - The wire extends when heated by the cut process, So with out some sort of a system to maintain the wire tension during the cut, the wire can bow. I think this is part of the reason why they have the feed wire on the bottom, they are trying to use the spool weight to mitigate it. 5. Water Chiller system - Between the cut process an the pumps, it will only take a little bit for that water to be like bath water. For the accuracy level of this system it shouldn't be a big deal, but that baby is still going to get hot. 6. Wire spool holder - That wire they are using, will come on at the minimum a 8lb spool, and then you need to rewind it on to their little couple 100gram spools. It really wouldn't take much to make a wire feed system, as it is basically just a motor that feeds when a swing arm hits a limit switch creating a slack loop that the machine them uses out of. |
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Originally Posted By PiGood: So from a professional machines standpoint on Wire EDM there is a lot of fundamental components you will find on all WEDM machines. View Quote Much appreciated. Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but I think all of them are reasonably easy to do at home. Spool holder and despooler have been available for years for regular 3D printing and could be adapted. Deionizing and filtering are both just a giant filter cartridge thrown into the loop. There was another homebuilt machine with a tensioning system that was not much more than a bunch of V-grooved wheels; I'm sure there are much better ways of doing it, though. Pump to clear the gap is trivial. Chiller just needs some ice thrown into the loop in front of the pump. |
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https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/Betta-Wire-A-Desktop-4-Axis-Wire-EDM-Machine-You-Can-3D-Print/194-2724634/ |
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Originally Posted By Sebastian_MacMaine: Much appreciated. Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but I think all of them are reasonably easy to do at home. Spool holder and despooler have been available for years for regular 3D printing and could be adapted. Deionizing and filtering are both just a giant filter cartridge thrown into the loop. There was another homebuilt machine with a tensioning system that was not much more than a bunch of V-grooved wheels; I'm sure there are much better ways of doing it, though. Pump to clear the gap is trivial. Chiller just needs some ice thrown into the loop in front of the pump. View Quote That is the thing, for the most part your not, and personally I only see a couple hundred dollars more to make it a pretty good little machine. The resin and the tension system is really the only hard parts. And fundamentally those are just a load cell with a break when the tension falls off, and a separate loop off the pump controlled by a valve that runs water thru the resin tank when a resistance sensor says the water getting too conductive. I would go with a repurposed PC watercooler kit, or a hobby laser chiller, but if you want to go the china hobby laser route a bucket of ice water with a pump works. It looks like they have done a good job on the arc generator, but with out these other things it is never going to cut consistent. Even just having a manually potion able upper nozzle guide would do wonders for it's performance. They are working on some of this stuff it seems, as I have seen what looks to be a filter/chiller/DI thing, show up in a couple different videos showing off their 4 axis machine. |
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Originally Posted By PiGood: So from a professional machines standpoint on Wire EDM there is a lot of fundamental components you will find on all WEDM machines. The ones they are missing. 1. High pressure flushing pumps. - They clear the eroded material from the cut, the quicker you get the material out of the cut the faster you can go. 2. Filters. - You are reusing the water, so you need to filter out the eroded material before you recycle it. If you don't not only will it plug up the system, the particulate will mess with your conductivity between the part and the wire and thus your cut speed/efficiency as you cut. 3. De Ionizer System - This combined with the filters helps you maintain the resistance level in the water, otherwise you pretty much have no control of your arc gap as you cut. 4. Tension system - The wire extends when heated by the cut process, So with out some sort of a system to maintain the wire tension during the cut, the wire can bow. I think this is part of the reason why they have the feed wire on the bottom, they are trying to use the spool weight to mitigate it. 5. Water Chiller system - Between the cut process an the pumps, it will only take a little bit for that water to be like bath water. For the accuracy level of this system it shouldn't be a big deal, but that baby is still going to get hot. 6. Wire spool holder - That wire they are using, will come on at the minimum a 8lb spool, and then you need to rewind it on to their little couple 100gram spools. It really wouldn't take much to make a wire feed system, as it is basically just a motor that feeds when a swing arm hits a limit switch creating a slack loop that the machine them uses out of. View Quote They do have a tension system. |
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Originally Posted By J_Von_Random: They do have a tension system. View Quote Yeah seen more videos on it. This one actually dose a pretty good overview of the mechanical bits. Wire EDM at home? RackRobotics PowerCore V2 FIRST LOOK #3dprinting #rmrrf It has a tension system, but it is passive, no feedback loop. Also, the Betta wire is doing 100psi flushing, so it has high pressure jets! Or at least as high of pressure as you probably would expect on a 3D printed chassis. |
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I plan on adding a water pic tooth cleaner for irrigation. Or some other sort. Seems like a needed feature.
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Not yet
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