Pushing the boundaries with EDM

EDM stands for Electrical Discharge Machining and is a way to poke accurate holes in metal by using a sacrificial electrode and a spark generator. The people at Cardiff University are pushing the boundaries by making holes two to four times narrower than a human hair.

World's narrowest hole? MEC scientists' precision breakthrough
Scientists at the Manufacturing Engineering Centre (MEC) believe they may have drilled the world's smallest hole, narrower than a human hair.

Experts at the Centre have developed machinery so sophisticated that they can drill holes as small as 22 microns (0.022 mm) in stainless steel and other materials.

The human hair varies between 80 microns (0.08 mm) down to 50 microns (0.05 mm) in thickness.

"The holes we are now drilling in Cardiff with the electro-discharge machining (EDM) process could be the smallest in the world," said the Centre's marketing director Frank Marsh.

"The standard rods available commercially are capable of making holes of 150 microns. Although lasers are able to make small holes, these are of poorer quality when compared to the EDM process. Lasers make holes that taper, whereas EDM makes parallel or vertical holes."

All sorts of possibilities open up...