On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 14:19:38 -0700, Gunner Asch
wrote:
On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 07:36:19 -0500, Pete Keillor
wrote:
On Sat, 15 Aug 2015 17:59:24 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:
On Saturday, August 15, 2015 at 6:00:47 PM UTC-4, Pete Keillor wrote:
I'd still need to build the carriage, stepper drive, controls, etc. I
have a Beaglebone Black which could be applied to that job. I can get
a reasonable stepper for $11 from the salvage place in town, plus some
linear bearings and a bellows coupler for not much.
Any known reasons the welder is a bad idea?
Thanks.
There are some DIY edm plans on the internet. You might look at some of them for ideas.
Many years ago, somewhere around 1969 a friend and I kludged up a edm. We used his drill press for the feed by setting the depth nuts and then leaned on the handle to feed the tool a very small amount. As I remember we used a good sized maybe 500 VA transformer and I think a voltage doubler. A light bulb in series with the supply had low resistanece when things were working and a higher resistance when we had the tool shorting to the work. A kludge , but it worked and we could put square holes into tool steel.
We were charging the cap to about 300 volts. So a bunch higher voltage than your welder would supply, but the plans on the internet all use lower voltage.
So in answer to your qoestion , I do not know.
Dan
Thanks all. Lloyd, yeah I'm retired and I think it'd be educational,
plus I already spent an hour or two picking and pecking at it.
Good ideas, Ed. I might combine that with Dan's drill press idea for
a test. I'll try the welder at much lower voltage. If that doesn't
work, then I'll ge further into Lanlois' design using some big caps.
Pete Keillor
You guys may..may wish to simply buy a used EDM machine. Used but
working good machines are simply thrown away all over the US because
they have become "obsolete"
Wire, sinker, spark....Ive tried to find buyers and wound up pushing
them into scrappers trucks with a forklift off the loading docks.
Ive destroyed at least 4 of these in the past 10 yrs..simply because
no one wanted them..and they were ALL in good working shape
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Electro-Arc-...item3cff60b45c
It's a shame they're going to the dump/scrap yard, but at $1k to ship
plus a lot of space to set it up, it's no big wonder. Are smaller
units built? I'll bet tiny EDMs find new homes a lot more easily,
especially with hobbyists like us.
--
The beauty of the 2nd Amendment is that it will not be needed
until they try to take it. --Thomas Jefferson