Experimental Study on Micro Wire Electrochemical Discharge Machining of Ultra Clear Glass with Rotating Helical Tool

Electrochemical Discharge Machining (ECDM) is an effective way to fabricate micro holes, micro grooves, micro channels on non-conductive materials. In this paper, a set of experiments were carried out to investigate machining localization of Wire-ECDM (W-ECDM) with a rotating helical tool in ultra clear glass. Meanwhile, model for machining process was established. Finally, experimental results show that side gap rises with increase of pulse voltage, duty factor and reduces with the increase of pulse frequency and feed rate. By selecting optimized parameters and applying rotary helical tool, experiments indicated W-ECDM is capable of machining micro cantilever beam, micro slits and complex closed structure with ten several microns side gap.