Rapid tooling aided by reverse engineering to manufacture EDM electrodes

Abstract

The present work deals with the application of indirect rapid tooling (RT) technology to manufacture electrical discharge machining (EDM) copper electrodes from investment casting, with wax prototypes made by ThermoJet 3D printing, a rapid prototyping (RP) technique. The reverse engineering (RE) method is utilised to transform the point cloud data of an object surface, obtained from 3D digitising, in a 3D CAD surface model dataset. The methodology presented is fundamental to verify the prototype’s geometry for tooling so as to assure its metrological accuracy and to optimise foundry process parameters using finite element analysis (FEA). Based on a case study, some functional conclusions are presented for the application of RT in manufacturing EDM electrodes aided by 3D digitising and RE, validating the accomplishment by the integration of these technologies and methodologies in EDM manufacturing processes.