University:
Boston University
Course:
GRS CS 910 | Directed Study: Systems
Academic year:

2020
Views:

281

Pages:

9
Author:

WheereLokihxu

Legacy Wire EDM Tutorials TUTORIAL #1 - WIRE EDM 2-AXIS In this tutorial you will become familiar with working with the GibbsCAM Wire EDM interface and creating a simple 2-axis EDM part. You will need to have GibbsCAM and the Wire EDM package installed and licensed. 1. Launch GibbsCAM. 2. Open the file die block.vnc. The file should be located in a folder that was installed along with your Wire EDM package. In top view (Ctrl+H), the part looks like the following image. 3. Select all of the geometry on the screen (Ctrl+A). 4. Select Launch EDM - Selected Geometry from the Wire EDM menu. 4 Your Wire EDM screen will look as shown below. 5. Click on the Zoom Full button in the top Toolbar, to fit the geometry to the screen. The first thing we need to do is to set the wire configuration and strategy. 6. Click on the Wire Configuration side of the screen. button. It is in the Top Level palette going down the right Clicking on the Wire Configuration button will activate the dialog shown below. This dialog is where you will specify the type of wire machine you have, wire display, the Z top of the part, part thickness, part orientation and the output for Z planes. 7. Enter the values as shown. 5 8. Click on the Machine strategy tab. Enter the values shown below. This sets the preferences for how we are going to machine this part. 6 9. Click on the Gluestop options tab. Make sure the Skim all gluestops option is checked and click OK. 10. When you have finished, click OK. Now that we have set up the machine, we can begin to put toolpath on our geometry. 11. Click on the Create or edit a wire part button in the Toolbar. Looking at the bottom of the screen, we can see that we are being asked to pick the profile to be cut. 12. Select the area of the middle profile as shown. You now get the Create Wire Part dialog. 7 This dialog allows you to set Cut type, Start position and the number of skim cuts. We now need to select a start point for the cut. 13. In the current dialog click on Select start point. The bottom of the screen is asking us to select a start point. 14. Select the point in the middle profile as shown. You will now see a dialog, as shown below, displaying the coordinates of the start point. We need to set the width of the gluestop. 15. Enter the value shown here and click OK. You will be sent back to the Create Wire Part dialog. 8 16. Click OK. 17. Click the ISO View button 18. Click the Zoom Full button in the top Toolbar. in the top Toolbar. This will put the part into isometric view and fit the geometry and the toolpath to the screen.The results of your toolpath will look like the image on the left. This is a simple example of how to create a wire path. Now we will go back and modify the toolpath. 19. Right-click anywhere on the profile to open the Right-click menu. 20. Select Properties. 9 Clicking on Properties opens the Modify Wire Part dialog. This dialog looks similar to the Create Wire Part dialog that we used to generate the toolpath. We will use this dialog to modify the toolpath in order to set a taper and the number of skim cuts. 21. Click the Full height taper radio button. This modifies the dialog to include a Taper angle text box and a different graphic. 22. Enter a taper angle of 5 degrees. Next we will add some skim cuts. 23. In the Number of cuts section, click the 4 radio button to set four skim cuts. Your dialog will look like the image above. 24. Click Update. The dialog will close and the result is an updated toolpath as shown in the image below. 10 The actual height between each displayed skim cut and the number as well as the color of the dashed 4-axis lines will vary depending on your Display settings found in the Wire strategy/configuration settings dialog. There is geometry on this part that was not covered in this tutorial. You can use this geometry for continued practice with different machine settings, tapers etc. 25. Save this file in case you would like to go back and work with it at a later date. 11

Legacy Wire EDM Tutorials 1