Mike Price of Pontypridd Precision Engineering explains that its customer, Calsonic Kansei, gave it the opportunity to quote for the tooling for a JLR project. The tooling required an extensive amount of wire erosion work and, while the company had a CNC wire erosion machine, it would not have been able to cope with the extra workload. Warwick Machine Tools’ solution is an Excetek V350 CNC wire EDM machine tool. 

The Excetek V350 is capable of accommodating workpieces to 700 x 500 x 215mm and weighing up to 450kg. It has U and V axis travels of 80mm and ±30° taper capability.

Although very different to the company’s previous machine, a training package included with the purchase enabled staff to start programming from day one.

While the future plans involve programming most of the CNC machine tools used by PPE with its OneCNC CAM software, the Excetek is currently programmed at the machine. As Mike Price says: “It is very straightforward for our staff to do this at the CNC interface, compared to say a lathe or machining centre.”