Development of a New Pulse Discriminating System for Micro Electro Discharge Machining (μEDM)

Tool wear in μEDM is a serious problem which causes dimensional inaccuracy in the fabricated components. In order to address this issue, tool wear monitoring and compensation in μEDM has become a thrust area of research. The existing tool wear compensation system very much relies on the pulse discrimination (PD), based on the voltage and current signature of discharges. The available PD systems applicable to a fixed process parameter and thus it also makes the existing tool wear compensation system valid only to that parametric setting. In this context, the authors have proposed a new pulse discrimination strategy for μEDM so that it could work at different parametric setting. Therefore, the developed PD strategy could help micro fabrication industry by making the existing tool wear compensation system suitable for any process parameters.