An ASIC for die-sinking spark erosion simulations

Abstract

Electrical discharge machining (EMD) simulation has always been considered as a very hard problem, for reasons that such simulations are extremely computation intensive. However, the authors present a wide range of implementations for the die-sinking spark erosion process, which prove that EDM simulations are today executable in an acceptable time. All the implementations proposed here are designed in a fully automatic way, using the Cathedral Silicon Compilers System developed at IMEC-Heverlee. The results are compared with similar implementations on a TMS320 domain specific commercial signal processor. From the viewpoint of EDM-users, these simulations are very useful because the final results of this kind of thermo-electrical process are in no way predictable.<>