Surface Integrity of Micro Electrical Discharge Machining

With the rapid increasement for MEMS technology, micro and nano manufacturing processes have significantly developed during last decades. Actually, it is relatively easy to machine some conventional sized components whereas it is complicated to produce extremely large or small parts. With respect to traditional mechanical machining, the shape or the size of the workpiece is usually on the centimeter or meter scale. Therefore, in order to manufacture some small sized components which off course need more precise machining methods, micro-EDM absolutely becomes a very important technology for some applications. Because of the tiny size of the parts, some problems such as dimensional accuracy, surface quality, structure property, etc. are difficult to guarantee. This doctoral project will therefore realize digital monitoring of micro-EDM through advanced sensing technology, and then develop a surface quality prediction model based on in-process monitoring relevant parameters and edge-computing, combined with off-line characterization and deep learning to achieve control of the machining quality of parts.