System Design and Kinematics Simulation of Electrochemical Machining Set-Up for Micro-Holes

Electrochemical micro-machining (EMM) appears to be very promising as a future micro-machining technique, since in many areas of applications, it offers many advantages, which include excellent machining precision and control, high machining rate, perfect surface quality and a wide range of materials that can be machined, regardless of their strength and toughness. At present, electrochemical micro-machining has been applied in the production of some metal workpieces, such as micro-holes, micro-slots and complex 3D surfaces. In this paper, A new electrochemical micro-machining set-up for machining metal micro-holes has been developed. Double level mechanical structure has been applied as the main structure style, which has the advantage of excellent structure rigidity, compact framework dimension as well as perfect maneuverability and maintainability. The control system based on PLC control method has also employed to realize different motion styles for rotating axis, such as uniform velocity rectilinear motion, varying velocity rectilinear motion and cycle rectilinear motion and so on. In order to verify the reliability of this EMM set-up, some test works including static measurement, assembling interferences checking and kinematics simulation have been done. The simulation results demonstrate that the developed EMM set-up for manufacturing metal micro-holes is qualified and can satisfy the technical requirements of electrochemical micro-machining process.