Influence of Force Components on Thin Wire EDM

A. Herrero (a), S. Azcarate (a), A. Rees (b), A. Gehringer (c), A. Schoth (c), J.A. Sanchez (d)

(a) Micro & Nano Technologies Dep., Fundacion Tekniker, Avda. Otaola 20, 20600 Eibar, Spain
(b) Manufacturing Engineering Centre, Cardiff University, Cardiff, CF24 3AA, UK
(c) IMTEK, University of Freiburg, Georges-Koehler Allee 103, EG-79110, Freiburg, Germany
(d) Dep. of Mechanical Engineering – Faculty of Engineering of Bilbao, Avda. Urquijo s/n, 48013 Bilbao, Spain

Abstract

Apart from the important role that Micromachining and Ultraprecision machining has provided to the development of improved or innovative miniaturised products, these techniques have also attracted the interest of the researchers to obtain the highest accuracy and a thorough analysis of the principles governing the material removing mechanisms. The present article exposes the theoretical analysis of some aspects of the thin WEDM that drop the process accuracy in terms of minimum machinable slot or corner over/undercutting. The scaled electrode dimensions and the reduced power supply with respect to the normal process causes a different influence of the process variables and contributes to obtain complementary information about the WEDM process. The different force components contributing to the wire deformation are discussed and some of them are analyzed from a theoretical point of view presenting analytical calculations to evaluate their expected magnitude and pointing out the difficulties to obtain an experimental characterisation of each phenomena.