Verification of Basic Performance of Size-Reduced Automatic Discharge Gap Controller for Curved Hole Electrical Discharge Machining

摘要

This study deals with the basic performance verification of the size-reduced automatic discharge gap controller (ADGC) for a microrobot which can create long, complicated curved holes by electrical discharge machining (EDM). The development of curved hole machining methods is strongly required so that the pipelines having arbitrary shapes can be arranged in arbitrary positions. However, such pipelines cannot be formed, since holes are generally machined by drills. To solve the problem, the authors have proposed the curved hole machining method by use of a microrobot with EDM function. The microrobot has to have the function of performing stable EDM in the bottom of a curved hole. ADGC is the key component to achieve the function. Although the prototype of ADGc was developed, it was too large to install on a microrobot. Therefore, the prototypical ADGC has been improved to reduce its size. The results of the experiments for verifying the fundamental ability of the improved ADGC reveal its basic performance characteristics to EDM conditions and show that its full performance designed can be achieved.