Investigation And Simulation Of Ultrasonic Vibration Assisted Electrical Discharge Milling In Gas

Ultrasonic vibration electrical discharge milling (UED-Milling) in gas is a new-type EDM technology that using simple thin-walled pipe electrode and carrying out in gas medium. This technology has many advantages than conventional EDM in kerosene medium, such as higher material removal rate, lower tool wear rate, and less environment pollution and so on.UED-Milling in gas is proposed through combining ultrasonic vibration electrical discharge machining (UEDM) in gas and conventional ED-Milling in kerosene medium. This process is founded on the principle of laminated removal. It not only has advantages of good flexibility, handle-ability, but also is easy to measure and compensate tool electrode wear.In this paper, the mechanism of UED-Milling in gas is first experimentally studied. Then the whole machining process of UED-Milling is simulated.The material removal mechanism of UED-Milling and factors that affect material removal rate are studied, and laws of how these factors affect material removing are also concluded. UED-Milling experiments are then carried out to verify these theoretical analysis conclusions.Geometrical simulation software with friendly interface is realized by applying OpenGL (a high-performance 3D graphical interface) in Visual C++6.0 environment.Factors, such as discharge voltage, discharge current, pulse duration, pulse interval, gas pressure, amplitude, serve as members of the input layer, and machining results (material removal rate, tool wear rate, surface roughness) are forecasted successfully through them by using Artificial Neural Network (ANN). It is found that, with BP algorithm, the training time is quite short and the simulation result is precise.