Case Studies

A customer had a multi year contract on an aerospace part that was being EDM'ed in what was once considered state of the art. The 3 foot diameter part had over 100 blind .030-.040 holes, in several patterns in the ID. The part was set up in a fixture, in a conventional machine, using the old die set ways, the electrode fixtures holding several electrodes to burn each hole pattern at once. It was a situation with no flush, just a bath of oil that was open for error. All you needed was one electrode to bend, and you had a disaster. Northeast designed and built a machine for this part and for all parts that have ID holes. Now it is just one electrode, with through flushing, and automatic feed. You now have a much cleaner hole, quicker, with much less chance of error. For the right job, Northeast EDM does not think twice about buying or creating the machine for your electrical discharge machining needs, if we do not have it in house.

Northeast was having a storage problem. One of our customer’s tools were taking up an increasing amount of space. There was also the cost that the customer was incurring having those fixtures made. One day a light bulb went off. As we were looking for more storage, we realized that though these parts were all different, they were also very similar. With lots of imagination and some financial investment by Northeast, a universal fixture was created that would handle all of these type of parts. Northeast got some room with the elimination of all of those fixtures, and our customer has saved a ton of money on the production of new part numbers.