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Wire EDM machine at Rodmatic provides a quick return on investment

Story added 07 February 2010.

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An "£80,000 investment in a wire EDM machine is the best purchase Rodmatic has ever made when measuring a return on investment" said Managing Director Brian Steatham.

With more than 1700 different form tools being used in a year to maintain and service its wide array of multi spindle automatic lathes, one of the immediate savings comes from being able to produce special tools in house and not have to source them via a sub-contract manufacturer.

A Fanuc wire EDM machine was installed at the Hytek facility which is the fast response, smaller batch CNC machining operation housed on the same site as Rodmatic. Since the installation up to 450 programs have been written for special tools including form tools for the production of fastners, fittings, connectors and other components for Rodmatic's customer base which mainly surrounds the automotive, oil and gas, fluid power and environmental sectors.

The cutting life of each of theirs tools is now approximately 10 per cent higher due to the accuracy of the form and the cutting action, both of these are generated by the wire EDM machine process. Other savings have been made including the flexibility of being able to produce tools quickly when there is an urgent requirement.

There are also other components that are made using this new technology at Rodmatic, these include ring gauges and tools for form and width checking. Components such as these have proved to be far cheaper to produce in house through the wire cutting process than sourcing from external toolroom suppliers.

Over the last 18 months Rodmatic has been progressively working through the machine shop rebuilding and updating its machines and processes. As a result overall productivity and utilisation of each machine has been improved by around a third.

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