Research on Piezoelectric Self-Adaptive Micro-EDM

Abstract

A new kind of micro electrical discharge machining (EDM), piezoelectric self-adaptive micro electrical discharge machining, is proposed in this paper. The working mechanism of piezoelectric self-adaptive micro-EDM, which is based on inverse piezoelectric effect, is introduced. The new machining method, being different from the conventional micro-EDM, can realize self-regulation depending on discharge conditions. Some characteristics of piezoelectric self-adaptive micro-EDM, such as being benefited for removing the debris, reducing the occurrence of arcing/shorting circuits and realizing the self-elimination of short circuits, is talked about. Comparing with conventional micro-EDM, the discharge stability of the working process is improved greatly, and the machining efficiency is higher and the electrode wear ration is lower. A special micro-EDM machine is designed to realize mechanism of piezoelectric micro-EDM, the CNC software is developed with Visual C++2010 for the machine. Extensive experiments were done. The experimental results show that piezoelectric self-adaptive micro-EDM is an effective machining method for micro holes, micro slots and some micro structural parts.