Interesting discussion of tolerances

With all the discussion about the kerf of the laser and how tight the tolerances would be, I came across this video and thought folks would find it interesting:

I was not familiar with wire EDM but it sure can do some fascinating things. Maybe Glowforge can work on a hobbyist EDM machine next :slight_smile:

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I have a friend and mentor that actually built a “hobby” EDM amongst other things. He worries me sometimes.

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Holy cow. I have heard of it but haven’t seen it demoed.

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I will never be able to say “Aww that’s close enough…” without remembering this demo.

I am truly in awe of that snowflake demo.

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For anyone interested exploring what it might take to make an EDM machine (the normal(?) kind, not the wire kind)…

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That’s crazy tight tolerances. The snowflake was amazing.

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If you want to go down the rabbit hole of accurate machining in a home shop, check out Stephen Gotteswinter and This Old Tony. They don’t get down to tenths very often, but they know how to do it when they want to. Fascinating stuff.

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The tight tolerances were done by wire EDM. There are some good YouTube videos on that. Incredible tolerances. - Rich

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I had never heard of wire edm before, amazing technology!