Simulation of Material Removal Process in EDM with Composite Tools

Abstract

With the development of (electrical discharge machining) EDM technology, composite tools with special features gradually replace the traditional single-material tools and have become widely used in specific processing conditions. In order to predict the wear of composite tool effectively, in this paper, a material removal model of single-pulse EDM with composite tools was established by using the finite element method. The surface temperature distribution of the composite tool was obtained by taking the copper-die steel tool as the analysis object. And the shape of discharge crater as well as the removal volume was obtained by the element birth and death method. The influences of discharge parameters and tool materials on the removal volume were analyzed respectively. The EDM experiments were carried out by using copper-die steel as the composite tool to verify the simulation results. It shows that the errors between actual machining results and the simulation results are less than 10%, which proves the accuracy of the simulation model.