4 Axis Wire EDM Cutting

EPOSTWIN.EXE requires two incoming INC files, the first for the Program (XY) plane, and the second for the Auxiliary (UV) plane. The two INC files are created with NC 2 Axis Contour under the following guidelines.

Geometry

Create geometry for both the Program plane and the Auxiliary plane. The contours should be oriented parallel to the XY plane. The Z position of each contour is not important, since the post processor ignores any Z information.

Surface

Create a Synchronized cross section surface to verify the synchronization of the XY and UV contours. If SURFCAM does not prompt for Synchronize before creating a surface, you should break, trim, or increment the geometry until the XY and UV contours have the same number of elements.

Cut

NC 2 Axis Contour the XY and UV contours with the infeed type set to With C-Comp and the tool number greater than zero, even though tool numbers are not required in the actual NC code. The INC filename for the UV contour must be the same as the XY INC file with an X appended to the filename.

EDM.INC for the XY contour

EDMX.INC for the UV contour

Note   Both INC files must be the same size and the tool motion must be in the same order. This may preclude the use of splines within the contours because the number of linear moves required to cut a spline may not be the same.

Note   The post processor will automatically merge the XY and UV INC files without having to specify the UV filename.

Note   When offsetting for the wire thickness and cutting outside corners, additional moves may be created and cause synchronization to fail.

Note   SURFCAM defaults to optimizing contours which may cause synchronization to fail. Set the curve tolerance to zero and SURFCAM will not optimize the contours.