Development of Hybrid EDM System Combining Multispark EDM and Conventional EDM

This paper describes a newly developed hybrid EDM system which is composed of the multispark EDM system and conventional EDM system. Multispark EDM is characterized by higher removal rates and lower energy consumption compared with conventional EDM. However, it was difficult to obtain a continuously stable state with the multispark mode. This hybrid EDM system therefore switches the operation mode from the multispark mode to the conventional mode when the process becomes unstable. Then, if the gap state satisfies the condition under which the multispark mode can work stably, the mode is switched back to the multispark mode. From experiments, it was confirmed that the hybrid system developed works very well even under the machining conditions which make the process unstable with the multispark mode.