Simulation on Influence of Electrostatic Force on Machining Characteristics in WEDM

Abstract

This paper describes a simulation of the influence of electrostatic force on machining characteristics in Wire Electrical Discharge Machining (WEDM). The simulation is composed of the discharge location searching algorithm and analysis of the wire vibration. The simulation confirmed that the wire electrode can be resonated by the electrostatic force, when the discharge frequency is the same as the characteristic frequency of the wire electrode. When the wire was vibrated in mode 3, wire vibration patterns were copied to the workpiece surface in both the experiment and simulation, indicating that the resonance of the wire can decrease machining accuracy. In this study we also found that if the voltage of the open circuit is set high, the wire collides with the workpiece at a high frequency due to the electrostatic force, causing the wire to break easily.