Electrode software ‘triggers’ revolution at British toolmaker

A software package for EDM has helped a UK-based mould-making shop drastically cut the time required for electrode design and production, and the company could soon be using more products from the program’s supplier.

Alliance Tooling, Leicester, has reported that the combination of a new Sodick EDM AG60L spark eroder and Vero Software’s dedicated electrode design module Visi Electrode has completely revolutionised the production of the UK shop’s copper electrodes.

Program a boon to mould making

Luke Parsons, Alliance’s managing director, cited an example of a mould the company made for the trigger of a household cleaning spray. “We needed 10 different electrodes for the tool, which, previously, would have taken 10 hours to create. Each electrode used to take an hour to model, but Visi Electrode has reduced our design time by 80%, with each electrode now taking less than 10 minutes to produce.”

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Toolmaker Ian Jarvis says the software has made his job considerably easier. “Once I’d made a few changes to the fillet rads on the trigger mould I simply clicked on the faces I wanted to spark and enclosed them with a 3D boundary. They were immediately extracted from the tooling model, providing a quick and simple way to arrive at the required electrode geometry.” More complex areas are said to be extracted just as easily using a graphical face selection.