EDM (electric discharge machining) Machine

[scorch]

Homemade plunge EDM (electric discharge machining) machine built based on the book "Build an EDM" by Robert Langolois. (https://secure.villagepress.com/stor...age/2/item/797) The book consists of a series of articles that originally appeared in The Home Shop Machinist.

I deviated from the book in a couple of ways. First I sourced some of the components from scrap electronics and an electric clothes dryer that I picked up for free on the side of the road. The main transformer came from a microwave oven along with a cooling fan. A smaller transformer was sourced from an old stereo. The heating coil that I used as a power resistor was also taken from the old electric clothes dryer. The motor from the same clothes dryer is still in use on my http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/g...9966#post41061.

Additionally I used a sand cast aluminum part to support the linear actuator components and finished the whole thing off with a few custom 3D printed parts to fasten the linear actuator parts together.

Here are a couple pictures of the major components with and without the case cover installed:


Here is the machine setup for cutting a part:


These are a couple of pictures of items that were machined using the EDM. On the left is a piece of hex stock that I machined with a small electrode. On the right is a neodymium hard drive magnet that I cut a circle out of.


In the video below I talk about some of the major parts used to build my machine and show a couple of parts that I cut using the EDM. At the end of the video there is a short clip of the machine in action.

The posting of this tool finishes off the list of homemade tool I posted in my original forum post about a year ago in April 2015 (http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/s...omething-17270)