Tapping EDM's innovation potential

The source of innovation Inputs for innovation at GF AgieCharmilles come from market research, customer needs and demands, surveys of alternative and complementary technologies, internal and external research, and brainstorming among R & D team members.

“On a regular basis, our innovation cluster organizes an Innovation Days event where market representatives, product managers, R & D team members and application specialists get together in closed session,” said Marco Boccadoro, Head of EDM Research and Innovation with GF AgieCharmilles Research and Development. “The core team formulates problems that constitute the main topic of the sessions. Using creativity tools like brainstorming, Metaplan and morphological analysis, ideas are collected, structured and prioritized.”

In subsequent discussions, those ideas are harmonized with GF AgieCharmilles’ corporate strategy, and innovation portfolios are established.

Sergei Schurov, Head of EDM Research and Development, pointed out that innovation should not be limited to the technology alone. Its true potential is ultimately measured by the commercial success of the products it enables. This implies that even breakthrough ideas have to find their way to the market. That’s why GF AgieCharmilles applies a ranking method based on objective selection criteria.

“It is important to consider both factors – feasibility and attractiveness – in the evaluation phase. In this context, we examine feasibility as a function of risk, affinity with core competencies, and product cost impact, and we look at attractiveness as a function of return on investment, business strategy affinity, and added value,” he explained. “The product of these two factors gives the score that we use to rank our projects.”

Projects requiring applied research draw on GF AgieCharmilles’ network of university partners across Europe: the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering at RWTH Aachen University in Germany, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, University of Leoben in Austria and, in Switzerland, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and Inspire AG (the Swiss competence center for production technology), the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, University of Geneva, Haute école du paysage, d'ingénierie et d'architecture, University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland, and University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland.

The innovation cluster coordinates new projects up to the feasibility stage, where they flow into the R & D product development roadmap.

GF AgieCharmilles’ approach to innovation and product development yields measurably improved performance in die-sinking, wire-cutting, and drilling EDM, Boccadoro said. In the past 12 years in WEDM, GF AgieCharmilles has reduced form tolerance by 50 percent, reduced surface roughness by 66 percent, and decreased internal radii by 40 percent. On the die-sinking side, the Group has reduced the spark gap from 20 micrometers to 5 micrometers, decreased surface roughness by 75 percent, achieved a 75 percent reduction in internal radii, and virtually eliminated wear on copper and graphite electrodes. In the same period, GF AgieCharmilles’ human machine interface has become more user friendly, machine precision has improved, and generator efficiency increased from 20 percent to 80 percent.

The innovation horizon Schurov and Boccadoro agree that EDM will remain a key technology for global progress well into the future due to sociological factors spurring growth in medical technologies, environmental factors boosting the market for energy-efficient lighting, machinery and materials, and technological factors like miniaturization, new materials, and information and communications technology requiring micro EDM, greater precision and self-correcting machines.

“Innovation also will come from the improvement of consumables including new wires, electrode materials and technological liquids,” said Boccadoro. “GF AgieCharmilles is already ahead of the innovation curve in terms of anticipating trends and needs and bringing to market innovations that improve the EDM process. EDM as a basic technology is nearly 70 years old, but it still represents fertile ground for discovery and innovation. GF AgieCharmilles will be on the cutting edge of both.