A Study of Electrode Wear Estimation and Compensation for EDM Drill

Electric discharging machining (EDM) is commonly adopted to machine the precise and tiny part when it is difficult to meet the productivity and the tolerance by the conventional cutting method. The die-sinking EDM method works well to machine the micro-parts and the perpendicular wall of die and mould, whereas EDM drilling, called super drill, is excellent to machine the deep and narrow hole regardless the material hardness and the hole location. However, the electrode wear is rapid compared to the conventional cutting tool and makes it difficult to control the electrode feeding and to machine precisely. This paper presents an efficient method to estimate the electrode wear using hole pass-through experiment while the stochastic method is used to compensate for the estimation model. To validate the proposed method, the commercial EDM drill machine is used. The experiment result shows that the electrode wear amount can be predicted very precisely.