Improvement of EDM performance with advanced monitoring and control systems

The electrical discharge machining (EDM) process performance depends on maintaining an appropriate machining gap with a servo system and discharge pulse parameters with a pulse power generator. The integration of the state-of-the-art monitoring and control technologies can substantially improve the performance of the EDM process. This paper reviews the research and development of advanced monitoring and control systems for die-sinking EDM and wire EDM during the last two decades. Important research activities include different EDM gap monitoring systems, servo and pulse adaptive control systems, and knowledge base control systems.