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22 www.CNC-West.com CNC WEST February/March 2018 A t 29 years old Rick Erickson already had a decade of experience in manufacturing. He opened Wire Tech with a single wire EDM and a small workspace in a Phoenix suburb. A few decades down the road he is a bit older, a lot wiser, andWire Tech has become a premier manufacturing center in the Southwest. As Every Breath You Take topped the charts in 1983, Rick Erickson was switching careers as a tool and die maker into business owner and EDM job shop. Wire Tech grew rapidly, ex- panding to a larger shop within the first year. They moved again to their current location a few years after that. “In 2004 I bought the building next door to this one,” tells Rick. “Since the begin- ning, I try and buy either a new piece of equipment to add to our abilities or to replace older machines. That means needing larger and larger work areas.” They currently have two buildings totaling 15 ,000sq.ft . and though it is a pain to transfer parts be- tween the two locations, it is the right amount of space to house 18 CNC machine tools, support equipment, a quality lab, and offices. “I’ve always been of the opinion that keeping up with technology gives you an advantage,” continues Rick. “Especially in the early days when we were only doing job shop work. The Phoenix area is littered with machine shops on every corner, but the list gets smaller when you narrow it down to state of the art manufacturing facilities.” Surprisingly, Wire Tech is not just EDM, but a full-service CNC manufacturing company. For the first 12 years Wire Tech was strictly a wire EDM job shop, but in the mid 90’s that changed when they added sinker style EDM to the mix. It was at that time they got their first mill, a Mikron HSM 700 high speed machining center. “You can’t have sinkers without mill- ing support equipment,” explains Eric Rubin, shop manager at Wire Tech. “Each electrode is custommade for that part and re- quires expert machining to process. A lot of tribal knowledge is needed with sinker EDMs. Anyone can run it, but to truly be an operator it takes a lot of experience.” Wire Tech’s operators are involved in every step of the process. They do their own pro- gramming and work closely with the milling department manu- facturing of the needed electrodes. Wire Tech has five sinker EDMs, all GF Agie Charmilles and eight wire EDM machining centers. Throw in a couple of hole popper EDMs and there is an electrical bill you don’t want to see during the Arizona summer. Originally the Mikron was used only for machining elec- trodes, and internal tooling/fixtures, but Rick saw a shift in their customer’s needs and began to offer milling in support of EDM. “We started out as EDM only, but over the years we’ve added capabilities allowing us to provide a finished assembly,” details Rick. “It was a gradual process, but since we already had high speed machining centers to support the EDM process we might as well offer those services to our customers as well. We wanted to do the whole assembly. That way our reputation for deliver- ing a quality product isn’t impacted by the next guy down the supply chain.” Wire Tech is an approved vendor for many of today’s most respected brands like: Raytheon, Honeywell, GE, General Dynamics, and Siemens. Reputation and quality are less about pride and more of a way of life as a NADCAP, AS- 9100 and ISO certified company. For many years Wire Tech was a job shop supported by proj- ects that others couldn’t or didn’t want to do. “The business was built around injection molding needing the precision you can only find in EDM,” details Rick. “We always did aerospace and DON’T LET THE NAME FOOL YOU; WIRE TECH IS NOT JUST FOR EDM. WIRE TECH INC. Article & Photos by Sean Buur Rick Erickson, president Wire Tech Inc and Eric Rubin, shop manager.