New technologies and applications of EDM process

Within the Faculty of Machine Building from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania unconventional technologies researches were performed for 20 years. The team focused on national research projects referring to micro machining and special applications. EDM process (Electric Discharge Machining) has a great importance to the industry. Even if it never be able to compete with the metal cutting manufacturing process in terms of material removal rate, today it is the main manufacturing process of complex die and mould, due to the major advantages presented in this paper. Today, also the precision of the process competes with the milling process in terms of quality of the surface, which can arrive at values that, in some cases, are better than the values for grinded surfaces. The article presents the importance of the process in the industry of stamps, which can not be processed with other methods, due to special materials and forms that are wished to be obtained. The article presents comparatively the values of the roughness obtained by EDM process on different types of materials and by different process parameters. Concerning the optimisation of the EDM technological parameters, the research has been done on different types of EDM machines. The final scope is to elaborate a technological data base with the purpose of optimising the EDM process on different machines.