The world of precision engineering has seen several advancements over the last decade due to a persistent need of finer tolerances in products. This need has been felt due to certain industries where one has to have products of very high accuracies. Such industries include aerospace, automotive sector, firearms, jet turbine fuel systems and products concerning defense. As a spinoff several other changes have occurred in the exacting field of precision engineering. One of these changes has been in the development of new products that go beyond even the realm of the Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines, used for turning, milling and sometimes both kinds of operations. One such product is that of Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM). It is one of the most accurate manufacturing processes available for the creation of either complex or simple geometries and shapes.
Here, the EDM drill has made it possible for precision engineering companies to manufacture products for highly critical customers such as those from the aerospace and defense. The other requirement that a precision engineering company finds it impossible to do without is that of suitable support for carrying out metallurgical analysis. Needless to say, no reverse engineering can ever be possible without firstly finding out not only the metallurgical composition of the actual piece being copied but also the physical characteristics of the original sample.
The EDM works on the principal of material erosion by creating an arc between a tool working like an electrode and the work piece. This form of manufacturing is both affordable and desirable when you need high accuracies or low counts. The turn-around time in the case of an EDM drill is fast and is useful especially when the manufacturer has a back log.
In case of EDM machine like the EDM drill, the work piece is immersed in an electrically non-conducting fluid that acts like a dielectric and also flushes away the debris during the process of drilling. The cutting pattern is generally CNC controlled and since the electrodes in an EDM machine can rotate about two or three axis it allows for the cutting of very fine internal cavities.
For carrying out tasks as gearbox repair, melt pump refurbishment and the analysis of heavy metals, a well-established metallurgical analysis facility is a critical necessity. You can only imagine the criticality of Metallurgical analysis when a product meant for use in aerospace applications fails in the air thereby causing an unacceptable disaster. Modern precision engineering companies, therefore, invest in sophisticated X-ray fluorescence equipment with which virtually any metal or alloy can be tested within seconds and the composition determined in a Non Destructive Test (NDT). This ensures that only the right material is used in each case where a product needs to be copied in a process of reverse engineering.
