A Study on Performance Improvement of Electrical Discharge Machining for Producing Micro-holes Using a Shot Blasting Surface Treatment

Abstract

With an increasing trend toward miniaturization, electrical discharge machining(EDM) has been receiving a lot of attention as a suitable production technology for micro-parts, since it enables the machining of hard conductive materials with a high degree of repeatability and without alteration to the material. When a micro-hole is fabricated by EDM, however, the diameter of the inlet hole is larger than that of the outlet region due to the additional discharge effect caused by the eroded particles. In this paper, a shot blasting surface treatment, in which an abrasive material is accelerated through a pressurized nozzle and directed at the surface of a part, is suggested as an effective method to reduce the tapered shape of EDM micro-hole. In addition, the influence of process parameters such as spark-on time and electrode diameter on the machining performance was investigated. It is shown quantitatively that the difference in diameter between the inlet and outlet holes decreases with the shot blasting treatment and with decreasing spark-on time.