Engineering ingenuity
One of Herrington’s first hires at Voxel was electrochemist Dr. Omar Yepez, who previously worked to protect offshore equipment against rust. Herrington wanted Yepez to do the opposite for Voxel. After all, that’s what PECM is about—very fast, highly targeted corrosion that shapes intricate, high-quality geometries atom by atom.
“The PECM process is non-contact and non-thermal, so it can create thin-wall geometries with intricate features without deforming the part,” Herrington said. “Our electrochemical machining technologies involve complex fluid dynamics, multi-physics, chemical reactions, heat transfer and a variety of other aspects. But they can produce parts that traditional manufacturing processes can’t handle as economically or, many times, couldn’t make at all.”
The automated line at Voxel moves this rapid corrosion process into high-volume production. First, it sorts parts into a uniform infeed. Then a SCARA robot loads them onto a tray. A gantry moves the tray through pretreatment baths.
Next, an articulated robot grabs multiple workpieces and inserts them into the PECM cell. Inside, the tooling lowers into place, and an electrolyte solution fills the gap between the tool and the part. By applying the correct voltage potential, the system dissolves metal through electrolysis. Simultaneously, the electrolytic fluid acts as a flushing agent that removes waste material and any residual heat.
Afterward, the robot unloads the machined parts onto a separate tray. A second gantry then takes them through post-treatment baths and a drying chamber. Finally, another SCARA unloads the trays, while routing several parts to an inspection station with Micro Epsilon optical gauges.
The operation requires fast cycle times and synchronization between different processes. The process also requires the equipment to interface with databases, connect to other web-based platforms to extract data and be integrated with third-party devices.
