The Development Of Wire Cutting Machine Tools in The World

In the mid-20th century, when the Lazarenko couple in the Soviet Union studied the phenomenon and causes of switch contacts being damaged by spark discharge corrosion, they found that the instantaneous high temperature of the electric spark could cause local metal to melt, oxidize and corrode, thus creating and inventing the electric spark machining method. The wire cutting electric discharge machine was also invented in the Soviet Union in 1960. At that time, the contour surface was viewed by a projector and the worktable was manually fed back and forth and left and right for machining. In fact, it was believed that although the machining speed was slow, it could process fine shapes that were difficult to process with traditional machines. A representative practical example is the machining of special-shaped holes in chemical weaving nozzles. The machining fluid used at that time was mineral oil (lamp oil). It has high insulation, small inter-electrode distance, low machining speed, and limited practicality.
The model that was NC-ized and processed in deionized water (close to distilled water) was first exhibited by the Swiss EDM Machinery Factory at the 1969 Paris Machine Tool Exhibition, improving the machining speed and establishing the safety of unmanned operation. However, the production of NC paper tape is very troublesome. If it is not automatically programmed by a large computer, it is a great burden for users. Before the emergence of cheap automatic programming tools (APT), the popularity of wire cutting EDM was slow. Japanese manufacturers developed a wire cutting EDM machine that uses a small computer to automatically program the machine, which is cheap and has accelerated its popularity. The processing shape of wire cutting EDM is a two-dimensional contour. Automatic programming tools widely use simplified APT (APT language is simpler than the official model), and the emergence of simplified APT is an important factor in the development of wire cutting EDM.