FastEDR: innovating on decades of EDM
FastEDR removes seized fasteners from high-value components – something traditional electrical discharge machining (EDM) equipment was never designed to do.
Conventional EDM machines were built to create precision parts. Wire EDM cuts precise profiles in hardened tool steels, die sinking EDM creates cavities for injection moulds, forging dies and tooling, and hole drilling EDM cuts small, precise holes – often as a precursor for wire EDM, or for cooling holes in turbine blades.
In contrast, FastEDR is designed to recover components. It uses the same fundamental physics as traditional EDM machines, but put to a very different purpose – maintaining components, not manufacturing them.
FastEDR extends the already highly precise EDM process to deliver a safe, repeatable maintenance solution for MROs. Here’s how.
Automatic decap detection
FastEDR's software manages machining parameters during fastener removal – the system monitors the gap voltage in real time, making continuous adjustments to keep the electrode advancing at the right rate. If the electrode gets too close, the voltage drops, and it steps back; if the gap becomes too large, it moves forward.
Combined with a lead screw drive mechanism and magnetic encoder, this means the depth and progress of every removal are precisely controlled, with no need for any input from the operator.
The challenge in developing decap detection was distinguishing meaningful instability from the normal statistical variation in any EDM process – what engineers call a signal-to-noise problem. EDM always involves a small amount of natural fluctuation; the software has to recognise when that fluctuation crosses a threshold and becomes something significant.
In practice, this means an operator drilling a fastener nominally 10mm deep is protected even if that fastener turns out to be 9.9mm – a variation well within manufacturing tolerance. The machine detects the removal and stops. The engine is safe.
Fastener-specific settings
FastEDR holds a database of machining parameters for specific fastener types, so when an operator selects the fastener they need to remove, the machine tells them which electrode to fit, sets the correct power level, and knows the exact depth required.
There is no need to understand the underlying EDM process because the machine has already translated that knowledge into a repeatable, preset operation.
For fasteners outside the database, Scintam can add parameters, drawing on the same empirical testing and modelling that underpins the existing library.
Traceability and audit trail
In regulated industries like aerospace, demonstrating exactly what was done to a component – and when – isn't optional. FastEDR's live process monitoring creates a record of each job, providing the audit trail needed in high-value MRO work.
‘We record the date and time every time the machine uses the parameters – the depth and all of the EDM parameters like voltages and currents,’ says Scintam’s CTO, Pete Woodsmith. ‘We also record the machining depth versus time graph, so how long it took to do and how deep it was at any specific moment.’
Portability
FastEDR is a portable power unit with an interchangeable tool head, meaning the capability comes to the fastener – whether it's on an engine, a structure, or a component that can't easily be moved. You can't put a wing or an engine inside a conventional EDM machine, but you can bring FastEDR to them.
Precision and safety
FastEDR virtually eliminates the risk of damage to surrounding threads, coatings, or parent material because the process is free of mechanical force, and the electrode doesn’t contact the fastener directly.
‘If an operator is standing there with a hand drill drilling out a hundred screws in a row, at some point they will get it wrong,' says Pete. 'If it's a machine doing all the depths for you, the idea is that the machine will be the same every time.’
Although EDM involves melting microscopic particles of metal, the fastener and surrounding component remain cool to the touch throughout. The energy involved is tiny, the water cooling is immediate, and because the cooling is faster than the heating, heat never builds up. Only the material being removed is ever hot, and that's flushed away instantly.
FOD and swarf are eliminated because the water runs in a closed loop, collecting eroded particles in a filter before clean water is returned.
To sum up
It's worth being clear about what FastEDR is and isn't. It doesn't dissolve fasteners, or chemically unseat them, or use electricity to somehow loosen a thread. It uses spark erosion to remove them precisely, repeatably, without force, heat, or damage to anything that matters.
EDM has been doing that in manufacturing for decades. FastEDR brings it to maintenance.