Investigation of tool ware ratio in micro and conventional EDM

Micro-electrical discharge machining is an evolution of conventional EDM used for fabricating three-dimensional complex micro-components and microstructures with high precision capabilities. The material removal process has stochastic nature and is still not fully understood. This paper presents experimental results on observing the material removal rate (MRR) in dependence of alternating machining parameters and thus various discharge energies. We applied relatively low discharge energies as used in micro-EDM and relatively high as used in conventional EDM. Copper rods were used as electrodes. MMR of anode and cathode was measured. We concluded that the quotient between anode MRR and cathode MMR changes significantly when using parameters for micro-EDM in comparison to conventional EDM setup.