Acquisition of current impulses in electrical discharge machining

This paper presents a solution for the acquisition of electrical impulses generated in electrical discharge machining of material. These electrical impulses may be relevant when examining the material properties. Although the device used for electrical discharge machining doesn't have the possibility for this acquisition, choosing the predefined processing condition predicts arithmetic mean of electrical impulses, and that is the reason to expect a certain roughness of the processed material. Upgrading the acquisition system to the existing device enables continuous recording of impulses during processing. The measuring device consists of a sensor that works on the Hall element principle, a microcontroller which collects and sends data and the software on the PC that performs data acquisition. Maximum detection speed of electrical impulses of the measuring device is 1 Msps, in the 10-bit resolution, and the amplitude of the electrical impulse is 30 A. The sensitivity of the electrical sensor is 66 mV/A.