Machinability features in micro die-sinking electrical discharge machining

To manufacturing the micro parts, diverse methods have been studied and reported. Electric discharge machining (EDM) is adopted to overcome the limitations of conventional cutting methods. In this paper, a die-sinking EDM plan with the design of experiment is set up to analyse the characteristics of the die-sinking EDM. Variable factors are voltage, capacity, machining method and polarity. The analysis of variance on experimental data shows what influence can be brought after the change of the variable factors into electrode wears, workpiece edge length and surface roughness. The tendency in each condition of die-sinking EDM is studied by average response value. The results show that: 1) low discharge voltage and high capacity can enhance the precision of machined edge shape, 2) a DC-straight polarity method has an advantage over a DC-reverse polarity method, 3) an up-down method outperforms a slow down method.