Forty minutes without a state change is normal here.
Long unattended cycles invalidate idle-time logic built for machining centres. What to measure instead: run completion, wire-break rate and overnight window utilisation.
Wire EDM runs cycles measured in hours, frequently unattended overnight, and that single fact invalidates most of the idle-time logic that works on a machining centre. A VMC that has not changed state in forty minutes is a problem. A wire EDM that has not changed state in forty minutes is working normally.
Monitoring wire EDM well means measuring the things that actually govern its output: unattended run success, wire breaks, and how much of the available overnight window was used.
The consequence is that a wire EDM needs a different loss model, not different thresholds. What matters is completion of unattended runs and utilisation of the unattended window, and both are invisible to logic designed around attended machining.
Unattended run completion
A break at 02:40 costs the remaining night, not just the interruption. Time-to-detection is the whole cost, and a stop that surfaces on a phone at 02:45 is a different event from one discovered at 07:00.
Wire breaks and rethreading
Frequency and cause matter more than duration. A rising break rate points at settings, flushing, wire quality or workpiece condition long before scrap appears.
Overnight window utilisation
How many of the available unattended hours were actually loaded with work. Usually the largest single opportunity on an EDM section.
Consumable state
Wire, filters and dielectric condition, trended against run outcomes rather than replaced on a fixed schedule.
A networked wire EDM control reports machine state, cycle progress and alarm presence, and it is generally clear about whether a program completed or terminated. That completion signal is the single most valuable thing a wire EDM control provides, because it converts an overnight run from an unknown into a measured outcome.
Where it matters most is alerting. A wire break at 02:40 that reaches a supervisor's phone immediately can sometimes be recovered the same night; the same break discovered at shift start has already cost the window. This is the machine type where outbound alerting earns its keep most clearly, and it is worth planning the notification path during the pilot rather than afterwards.
Wire EDM setup is slow and precise — workpiece alignment, start holes, threading, program proving. It happens far less often than on a machining centre, so it is rarely the dominant loss.
What is dominant is the decision made at the end of the day shift: which job goes on for the night, and whether the machine will be loaded at all. Measuring the unattended window as a distinct period, with its own utilisation and completion rate, turns that decision from habit into something a supervisor can plan against. On most EDM sections that measurement is worth more than any efficiency improvement to the attended shift.
Two wire EDMs on a live dashboard this week.
Put your busiest machine on for a month and we will report unattended-window utilisation and run-completion rate — two numbers most EDM sections have never seen.
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