Sawing exotic materials, such as high-temperature superalloys, as well as hardened materials, can prove problematic. "You can eat teeth for lunch on that bandsaw blade trying to cut them," said Curtis Reichhold. He's president of Electrical Discharge Saws Inc., a supplier of electrical discharge saws that is working on commercializing an attachment for a manual lathe that turns the machine into an EDS.

Instead of buying a dedicated EDS, which costs about $225,000, the EDS attachment will sell for considerably less, according to Reichhold. "The majority of job shops have a manual lathe they can take and make it a superhardened- or exotic-material slicer," he said, noting, however, that the company has to analyze each application with a customer before proceeding.

The attachment bolts onto a lathe's ways and erodes electrically conductive material with a rotating ¾ "-high × 0.032 "-thick blade while the workpiece rotates as well. "Because of the expense of exotic materials, we try to keep blade thickness to a minimum," he said, noting this minimizes waste.

Reichhold emphasized that the EDS blade cuts cleanly, produces a heat-affected zone of only about 0.002 " deep and doesn't workharden the material.

When a shop doesn't need to use the EDS, the attachment remains on the lathe, which can still function as a conventional machine tool. Between uses, however, an end user must wash the dielectric fluid, which is caustic, from the lathe to avoid causing damage, primarily to the ways.

Unlike an EDS that can cut a workpiece material with virtually any shape, the attachment is only for cutting round bars. In addition, the attachment is suitable only for manual lathes to avoid a variety of issues, such as coordinating the lathe speed and blade speed and the need for a feed mechanism. "With the manual machine, we just bring the blade up against the work and it'll set there," Reichhold said, adding that the possibility exists for developing an attachment for CNC lathes in the future.

He noted the company is seeking a lathe builder to demonstrate the EDS attachment at the IMTS 2014 trade show, which takes place Sept. 8-13 in Chicago.

For more information about Electrical Discharge Saws Inc., Jackson, Tenn., call (877) MCH-TOOL. CTE