Everyone who works on a Robofil GF AgieCharmilles machine encounters problems sooner or later. Good news: most of them recur and have specific, fixable causes — rather than trial and error, learn to recognise them and eliminate them quickly.

⚡ Problem 1: Wire Breaks

The most common problem by far. The machine stops, the wire snaps, the process must be restarted.

Most common causes:

  • Too aggressive parameter settings — wire working at its load limit
  • Unstable electrical discharge process
  • Incorrect dielectric parameters (conductivity, temperature)
  • Poorly prepared or deformed wire before start
💡 Solution: Do not increase parameters by force. Check the wire condition and confirm it is correctly guided. Look at process stability. In many cases the problem disappears after correcting the basics.

🔬 Problem 2: Poor Surface Finish

Rough surface, lack of repeatability, visible machining marks. Most common causes: too fast settings, unstable sparking or varying working conditions. The problem often appears after a wire break, when the process resumes under changed conditions.

💡 Solution: Reduce setting aggressiveness, ensure process stability and check working conditions — especially the dielectric. Sometimes a small change makes a huge difference in surface roughness Ra.

⚙️ Problem 3: Unstable Machine Operation

Varying work pace, uneven cutting, frequent stoppages — most often the reason is one: the process is not stable. This can result from settings, working conditions or machine preparation. Rather than looking for a single culprit, look at the whole system: wire, parameters, water and program.

🔄 Problem 4: Problems After Wire Re-threading

The machine resumes but the result is different — quality change, dimensional differences, instability. After a wire break working conditions are no longer identical, the machining gap changes and the process runs differently. In precision production these positions need special control.

⚠️ Important: Do not assume everything will automatically return to ideal state. If it is a critical part — consider parameter correction after resuming.

⏱️ Problem 5: Excessive Cutting Time

Process takes too long, costs rise, efficiency drops. Most common causes: too-conservative settings, no optimisation or unnecessary additional passes. Solution: analyse the process, gradually increase productivity and test settings — but not all at once.

👷 Problem 6: Operator Errors

A topic rarely discussed but hugely important. Most common errors: no process monitoring, ignoring error messages and too-rapid parameter changes. Solution: monitor the process, react to early signals and introduce changes consciously — with analysis, not randomly.

ℹ️ Most important principle: In Robofil, problems rarely have a single cause. Most often it is a combination of settings, conditions and preparation. The best approach is to analyse the whole process, not just one element.