In wire EDM the program is often the estimate.

Where it starts

A customer sends a block that has already been milled or turned. One keyway, a contour or a cut-out has to go into it. Sometimes the specialist makes the whole part; more often just that one operation. Small work and large, in any conductive material.

The price hangs on four things: the material, the material height, the number of skim cuts the accuracy calls for, and the surface roughness. A finer finish means more skim cuts, and more skim cuts mean more time on the machine.

Sometimes there is more to it than the contour: a start hole for the cut to begin from, or start holes that prepare the part for the customer's next operation.

How it usually runs

There is usually no separate cost model. The programmer writes the program as it will actually be cut, and that program is the estimate. It is precise, but it takes time for every request, including the ones that never become an order.

The slow part is at the front: recognising what needs cutting. How many skim cuts, which tolerance and roughness, and which part of the semi-finished workpiece still needs machining. The CAM package can do it, just not fast enough for a quote.

And there is one fear every specialist knows: a missed feature. Miss one pocket in a large block and the whole price is wrong. Drawings often come under strict confidentiality too, so every step that touches a drawing has to be handled with care.

What Blake prepares

Blake sets up the request part by part: model and drawing together, paired by file name. If a pairing is uncertain, it stays a question for you, never a silent pick. More on how a request is set up.

Roughness, tolerance and material from the drawing are ready as proposals. You confirm or adjust them, and who changed what and when stays visible. The very requirements that set the number of skim cuts now sit with the part, rather than on a drawing you have to read through again.

You register your wire EDM machines with their envelope and hourly rate. Part, requirements and machine then sit together.

When a part comes back as a new revision, that revision gets its own files, next to the previous one. So the previous revision is at hand when you start programming again.

Where people decide

The specialist decides how the part is cut: which route, how many skim cuts, which machine. Blake records what he confirms.

Every correction to a drawing value is kept with who and when, plus a note if you add one. That way the know-how that today lives only in the program also ends up with the part.

What it comes down to

Wire EDM estimating is not in Blake today: cutting time from contour, material height, material and skim cuts is one of the next calculation models. What is there is exactly the input such an estimate needs: the requirements confirmed on the part, the semi-finished part as the starting point and the machine with its rate.

The yardstick for a wire EDM estimate is the specialist's: every face to be cut in view and a clear flag on anything missing. A missed feature costs more than a generous estimate. More on wire EDM and the profile for specialist operations.

Key points

• In wire EDM the program is often the estimate.
• Material, material height, skim cuts and roughness set the price.
• Today Blake prepares the request and the requirements, and records your machines.
• Wire EDM estimating is a next calculation model; its input is already there.