Control of corner arc radius in wire electrochemical micromachining

Abstract

Wire electrochemical micromachining (WECMM) technology is commonly used to process micro parts. Some thick parts contain many sharp structures, and have high machining accuracy requirements for the arc radius at the corner, such as jet sheet, micro gear, etc. However, when machining thick workpiece, it is easy to form a large arc radius at the corner due to stray corrosion and difficult discharge of electrolytic products. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a corner path optimization method, which reduces the arc radius of the sharp structure by adjusting the processing path of the wire electrode, thereby improving the machining accuracy of the sharp structures. The model of the relationship between the inclination of the machining path and the angle of the sharp structure is established. The inclination and offset distance of the processing path are obtained through theoretical calculation, and further optimized through experiments to avoid overcut or undercut at the corner. In the experiment, tungsten wires with different diameters were used as wire electrodes to process acute angle, right angle and obtuse angle structures on 510 μm thick 9Cr18Mo stainless steel. The influence of wire electrode processing path on the corner arc radius of different angle sharp structures was explored. The experimental results show that compared with the original path, the arc radius of the sharp structure could be reduced from tens of microns to <5 μm by using the optimized processing path.