When CNC wire EDMs came on the market in the mid-'70s, feeding wire from a spool through a machine's elaborate series of rollers and guides was a tedious manual exercise. Luckily, electrical discharge machining was an exceedingly slow process back then, so replacing wire had to be done less frequently than on today's machines, which erode conductive metal 10 to 20 times faster than earlier models.
Imported from the CTE archive to seed discussion on MFGAxis.
Originally published on CTE: 2016-03-15
CTE source: https://ctemag.com/articles/better-threaders/
Legacy path: /articles/better-threaders