Today we tried to make some test cuts to see if it was possible to make the leadframes that are stamped in the Molex connectors using EDM.
I designed a simple finger pattern with varying width fingers and we tried to cut it on the sodick out of 0.1mm thick copper shim stock.
It was quite difficult to cut because the material is quite thin. We fixtured it the best we could across a corner of the base, but this still left a significant unsupported span that could be flexed easily by hand.
When we tried to cut it, we found that the machine would cut, but the wire would always break after a few millimeters. We think this is because the water jet around the wire vibrated the copper plate, causing it to contact the wire and break it.
It may be possible to eliminate the vibration by sandwitching the copper sheet between the sacrificial thicker plates of metal or slamping many copper sheets together, but a different fabrication technology is probably better suited to the task.