Description: Holepop is the most comprehensive source for EDM consumables. We stock electrode rods, tubes, wires, guides, dielectric fluids, and chucks!
In electrical discharge machining, a guide is essentially just a sheath, which an electrode can slide through. Guides are placed as close to a drill site as possible, and hold an electrode in place to ensure a minimization of movement. Though the function of a guide may seem simple, the importance of drill accuracy has resulted in a number of clever innovations and a surprising variety of guide designs.
Guides have two primary components: the body and the guiding surface. The body is the metal shell of the guide. This gives the guide its shape, which can determine how close a guide can get to a drill site. A guide quickly loses its influence on an electrode’s stability as it gets farther away from a workpiece, so proximity is very important. To maximize proximity, our guides are highly customizable. The diagram below illustrates the important dimensions of a guide, all of which can be adjusted to specifica
The guiding surface is material inside the guide that contacts the electrode. Guiding surfaces are normally made of very hard, brittle materials such as ceramics or even minerals such as ruby and diamond, due to their smoothness. Our guides are primarily made with conventional ceramic or silicon nitride. Conventional ceramic is an affordable material with middling characteristics. Perfectly adequate for most applications, this material is best for machine shops that see great diversity in their jobs, and ne