Effect of Tilting Jet Flushing Nozzle on Wire EDM Performance

Debris exclusion from the wire EDM gap has been conventionally done by jet flushing using nozzles but the debris stagnation area always presents near the wire with the conventional method. In this study, a new flushing method using tilting nozzle to wire running direction to reduce the debris stagnation in the kerf was proposed on the base of simulation results by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis. The simulations and experiments clarified that the tilting jet flushing nozzle could decrease the debris stagnation area in the kerf and leads to smoother debris exclusion, resulting in higher removal rate. Furthermore, the wire deflection caused by hydrodynamic force due to the jet flushing was calculated by a structural analysis using the distributions of pressure acting on the wire surface by jet flushing flow obtained by the CFD analysis.