Abstract:
A laminated removal electrical discharge milling (LRED-milling) method is presented which combines the concept of laminated machining in rapid prototyping and the electrode uniform wear in EDM. The basic principle of laminated removal ED-milling is using simply shaped electrodes to remove the material from the workpiece layer by layer along with predetermined paths. By using this method, the time and cost of preparation on electrodes with complex surfaces can be dramatically eliminated. As an example, a simplified mold of IC socket with 40 pins is machined by LRED-milling. The result shows that this method is suitable for rapid mold making or rapid tooling. It expectably achieves better machining accuracy with much less expense, and it shows great potential of application in the future.
Key words:
Electrical discharge milling Laminated removal Rapid tooling
* This project is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.59935110).
Selected from Proceedings of 2000 the First International Conference on
Mechanical Engineering. revised manuscript October 6, 2001
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