Vibration-Assisted Micro-EDM Process

Abstract

In the current trend of modern technology, demand for accurate miniaturized machined parts made of newly developed extremely hard and brittle materials is increasing continuously and conventional machining and advanced machining processes are becoming obsolete to meet these requirements. Micro-EDM is capable to fabricate micro-tools and miniaturized machined components, but still the machining speed is pretty low. In the µ-EDM process, it is very difficult to remove small debris particles from the vicinity of the narrow machining gap which results in unwanted short circuits and arcing. Especially, due to very small energy of discharge, very low open voltage, and the stray capacitor in the RC type circuits, the machining becomes almost impossible. Thus, to overcome these problems in micro-EDM, vibration can be effectively applied to the tool, workpiece as well as to the machining fluid in order to obtain higher machining speed with high accuracy without significantly increasing the electrode wear .