Electrical discharge machining (EDM) cuts metal by discharging electric current across a thin gap between tool and workpiece. Electrical discharge wire cutting, a special form of EDM, uses a continuously moving conductive wire as an electrode, and is widely used for the manufacture of punches, dies and stripper plates. In the wire cutting process, the moving wire is usually supported by cantilever arm and wire guides. As the wire traveling speed has been increased in recent years to improve productivity, the vibration of the cantilever arm occurs, which reduces the positional accuracy of the machine. Therefore, the design and manufacture of the cantilever arm with high dynamic characteristics have become important as the machining speed increases. In this paper, the cantilever arm for guiding the moving wire was designed and manufactured using carbon fiber epoxy composite in order to improve the static and dynamic characteristics. Specimens for the composite cantilever arm were manufactured and tested to investigate the effect of the number of reinforcing plies and length fitted to steel flange on the load capacity. Also, the finite element analysis using layer and contact elements was performed to compare the calculated results with the experimental ones. From the results, the prototype of the composite cantilever arm for the electrical discharge wire cutting machine was manufactured and the static and dynamic characteristics were compared with those of the conventional steel cantilever arm.