History
... Karmel Onandia, founding partner
and chairman of ONA, is another figure whose life has
been intimately involved in the development and expansion
of EDM. Founded in 1952, it was in late 1954 that ONA
achieved a patent for the development of the initial
technology, which was still in the experimental stage.
One year later the first ONA electrical discharge machines
were on the market. Since then, ONA has continued to
be firmly committed to EDM. ONA is headquartered in
the Basque region of Spain, where all their Die Sinker
and Wire EDM equipment is manufactured. Today, ONA is
the oldest EDM firm in the world, and the leading manufacturer
in the European Union.
The
beginning of EDM came during the Second
World War, when two Russian physicists B.R. and N.I.
Lazarenko published their study on The Inversion of
the Electric Discharge Wear Effect which related to
the application to manufacturing technology of the capacity
of electrical discharges, under controlled distribution,
to remove metal.
EDM was being used at that time to remove broken taps
and drills. The early “Tap-Busters” disintegrated
taps with hand fed electrodes, burning a hole in the
center of the tap or drill, leaving the remaining fragments
that could be picked out. This saved workpieces and
very expensive parts from being scrapped and re-made.
This process opened the birth of Vertical EDM, also
called: Sinker, Conventional, Ram, Plunge or Diesinker
EDM, because the burned downward in the Z-axis. These
machines were, and still are primarily used to make
precision cavities in metal for the mold industry.
