Wire EDM
Hardened steel, cut without touching it
A charged wire erodes a path through conductive metal by spark, touching nothing and pushing on nothing.
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What it is good at
- Hardened steel, which is finished after heat treatment rather than before
- Sharp internal corners a milling cutter cannot reach
- Thin, delicate parts, because there is no cutting force to deflect them
What people order
- Punches, dies and tooling details
- Gears, splines and cam profiles
- Thin flexures and springs
- Fixture details in hardened stock
What to watch out for
- Conductive metals only — no plastics, no composites, no board
- Slow, and priced accordingly; it is the choice when nothing else will do
- Corner radius is limited by the wire diameter, not by zero
Materials
The conductive metals in the sheet catalogue. Plastics and board are cut by the other three processes, not this one.
- Tool and mild steel
- Stainless 304
- Stainless 316L
- Titanium
- Aluminium 6061
- Brass
- Copper
Availability depends on the workshop quoting your part; the quote shows you which of them can run the material you pick.
What to send us
STL files must be binary. An ASCII STL is refused rather than read incorrectly, so export binary from your CAD package.
SVG is not supported yet — export your outline as a DXF, or a binary STL extruded to the thickness you want it cut from.
How the price is worked out
Priced from the stock and the cut, and the cut is slow — wire EDM is bought for capability rather than for cost.
Parts per sheet is estimated from the machine bed and your part’s footprint rather than from a real nest, and the shop confirms before work starts.
Questions we get asked
Drop in your file and see the number
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Price my part