A look inside Wisconsin Engraving Co.

Need to have your newest bowling trophy engraved? If so, don’t call Wisconsin Engraving Co./Unitex. Although Vice President Pete Kambouris said the New Berlin-based company receives plenty of requests for retail-type engraving, “That’s not what we do.” Instead, the job shop’s craftsmen are dedicated to detailed engraving for molds and dies.

Founded in 1922 as Badger Engraving Co. by German immigrants, Wisconsin Engraving employs 28 workers at its 1,951-sq.-m (21,000-sq.-ft.) facility.

For engraving, the company developed the CAD-Grave process, which satisfies the requirements for the most complex shapes and contours and is suitable for mold surfaces that are not easily accessible by conventional methods, such as engraving close to a vertical wall.

Turn to the Burn

The company’s EDM department, which includes nine sinker EDMs, serves as an extension of the engraving department, Kambouris said, adding that he considers “engraving department” an overly broad term. “We’ve started calling it our micromachining department because of the level of detail we cut.”

A pantograph being operated.

The sinker EDMs perform a variety of functions, such as burning cavity IDs, logos and ribs for customers that perform plastic injection molding, he added. Other tasks include threadmaking when a customer forgets to tap a hole in a block of hardened steel and assisting tool, mold and die shops by burning cores and cavities.

Because its projects have little need for wire EDMing, Kambouris said Wisconsin Engraving outsources that work to local shops when the occasion arises.

In addition, Wisconsin Engraving receives overflow work from moldmakers. “They don’t have time to push it through their shops,” Kambouris said. “Not being dedicated moldmakers, we don’t compete with our customers. This enables us to take in a project, and there is no worry from our customer that we’re going to go after their customer, because we are only doing a small portion.”

Offering a variety of services, such as engraving, texturing, polishing and sinker EDMing, enables Wisconsin Engraving to be a one-stop shop for customers — a good selling point, according to Kambouris. “Timelines have become condensed. Before, toolmakers would quote a project for 16 weeks, and there was time. I’ll quote a project to my customers now and say, ‘Two weeks,’ and they’ll call back and say, ‘Three days.’ I’ll say, ‘How about four days?’ It’s very tight.”

When acquiring a sinker EDM, Kambouris said Wisconsin Engraving always looks for good-quality used equipment to save money while still satisfying the shop’s requirements. The average age of an EDM in the shop is 10 years.

“We have to look at the value of the equipment versus the product that we are putting in there,” he said. “If I had my way, everything would be brand new, but that’s not the case. We find that even an EDM that’s 10, 12, 13 years old does the same thing for us that a new one would do.”

Electrode Production

On the other hand, the company always buys new CNC metalcutting machine tools, Kambouris noted, with its latest purchases being Haas machines, including a five-axis one with 3+2 machining capability. Previously, Wisconsin Engraving favored Sharnoa machines. The shop still has three, but “two are having some surgery done on them. The problem is that after they closed shop in the U.S., there were no parts or service. If we are down a few weeks, in a few weeks I can cut a lot of electrodes.”

The five-axis machine helps reduce the number of electrodes needed when a mold detail requires a lot of undercuts, for example, he said. “If we can do the majority of the work on the five-axis, it will become more efficient for our workflow internally and help us with deliveries and pricing.”

Pete Kambouris, vice president of Wisconsin Engraving, started working at the company as a summer job while in high school.

The process for machining an electrode starts with a customer providing artwork or a CAD file, Kambouris explained. Wisconsin Engraving reviews the CAD file and “cleans it up” if needed. From there, the shop determines the depth of features and sends the file to a machine. The electrode is mounted on a fixture using the System 3R Macro holder system, which Kambouris said enhances stability, and then the tool steel or aluminum workpiece is burned. The company avoids EDM-ing carbide, he noted, because its hardness causes electrodes to wear quickly, requiring numerous electrodes to complete the job.

In addition, carbide jobs are challenging to quote or at least challenging for a customer to stomach the quote. “If I have it sitting in the EDM tank for 10 hours, and I have to use 100 electrodes to burn that detail, it’s expensive,” Kambouris said. “Sometimes they don’t pick that up, but most of our customers are highly educated about this stuff and understand.”

The vast majority of the electrodes are made of graphite. Wisconsin Engraving occasionally machines and burns using copper electrodes but tries to avoid it, Kambouris said. The graphite grade is an important consideration, with higher-quality grades being denser, easier to machine and able to produce finer workpiece details without chipping than lower-quality ones.

“Where it is applicable, we will always go with the highest grade we can,” he said. “We go mid to high on almost everything.”

Sometimes a customer supplies the graphite material and Wisconsin Engraving recommends a grade based on a project’s requirements, Kambouris said. However, that doesn’t guarantee that a customer will follow the recommendation and avoid sending a lower-quality grade to try to save money.

“But now I’m struggling to cut it,” Kambouris will tell the customer when that’s the case. “My price is going to change, so you are going to lose money. We try to educate the customer.”