Simulation And Experiment Research Of Rotate-print ECM

There exist some difficulties such as the deformation of thin-wall parts, low machining efficiencyand high cost of cutting tools etc. in conventional machining of difficult-to-machine material forrotational parts with complex surface. A new technology named Rotate-Print ECM is proposedregarding this situation. The bosses on the surface of rotational parts are considered as process targets,and special cathode structures are designed. The surface morphology of cathode is ‘printed’ on theanode to get the target parts through precise control of the relative motion between electrodes.A variety of software tools are used jointly for the simulation of Rotate-Print ECM to explore theforming regulation of boss. The movement of electrodes is decomposed and transformed, and themathematical law is derived, based on which the MATLAB GUI calculation program is made tocalculate the different boss trajectory of corresponding parameters and present them graphically; thefinal trajectory data is extracted from the calculation results, introduced into Pro/e and modeled afterbeing processed. Through these process, the calculation of machining results are carried out, and theforming regulation of boss is preliminarily explored, which can be used to supervise the followingcathode design, movement pattern determination as well as experiments proceeding.The Rotate-Print ECM system is designed and established, which consists of five subsystems:machining power, Rotate-Print ECM machining tool, motion control system, temperature controlsystem, and electrolyte filtration system.The basic experiments are attempted using0Cr18Ni9as the anode materials to test and verify theRotate-Print ECM; effects of some parameters such as machining voltage, electrolyte composition,main shafts’ speeds and the feeding modes etc. are preliminarily explored. When the height of themachined boss is0.51mm under a suitable machining condition, the average contour deviation andmaximum deviation are0.054mm and0.13mm respectively through comparison between machiningresults and simulation results.