Gap Control Using Discharge Pulse Counting in Micro-EDM

미세 방전 가공에서의 방전 펄스 카운팅을 이용한 간극 제어

The electrode wear in micro-EDM significantly deteriorates the machining accuracy. In this regard, electrode wear needs to be compensated in-process to improve the product quality. Therefore, there are substantial amount of research about electrode wear. In this study a control method for micro-EDM using discharge pulse counting is proposed. The method is based on the assumption that the removed workpiece volume is proportional to the number of discharge pulses, which is verified from experimental results analyzing geometrically machined volume according to various number of discharges. Especially, the method has an advantage that electrode wear does not need to be concerned. The proposed method is implemented to an actual micro-EDM system using high speed data acquisition board, simple counting algorithm with 3 axis motion system. As a result, it is demonstrated that the volume of hole machined by EDM drilling can be accurately estimated using the number of discharge pulses. In EDM milling process a micro groove without depth variation caused by electrode wear could be machined using the developed control method. Consequently, it is shown that machining accuracy in drilling and milling processes can be improved by using process control based on the number of discharge pulses.