Wire Electric Discharge (WED) machining (also known as electric spark-machining) is a non-conventional machining technique and involves performing cutting (machining) through heat generated due to an electrical spark. Wire Electric Discharge Machining is the workhorse of precision manufacturing. However, commercial machines are large in size: they usually occupy size of 10 ft × 10 ft × 10 ft. At the same time, they are very costly and mostly imported from outside India: the cost ranges from INR 20 lakhs to 2 crores. Therefore, many MSME level industries depend on specialized wire EDM shops to get their jobs done. The commercial machines lack customizability – therefore they cannot be used by research/educational institutes – which require that wire EDM machines to be tweaked easily.
Wire Electric Discharge (WED) machining (also known as electric spark-machining) is a precision cutting method which is used for cutting metals and other conducting materials across industries. The invention proposes a miniaturized version of the WED machine which can fit on a table top and is capable of cutting small workpieces. The machine is 50% lesser in size than the commercial machines. It could also be made available at 50% of the cost of the present off the shelf products.
Additionally, this invention is contains a customizable WED machine which enables input parameters of the WED machine to be customized, like the voltage and current levels of the electrical pulse, frequency and ON time of the electrical pulse, wire diameter and material, dielectric fluid type and speed and control system of workpiece feed.
- The machine disclosed here occupies lesser space than current machines.
- It is fabricated at a lower cost than currently available machines
- The machine is customizable; machining accuracy, material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness, and so on, can be tuned to a required value by changing the process parameters.
A prototype of the machine has been developed, the following image describes it. It is currently at TRL-4
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- This work is directly in-line with the ‘make-in-India’ goal.
- MSME industries can then buy this machine on their own and can increase manufacturing resources in precision centric sectors.
- The WED machine is useful for small scale industries who cannot afford large machines.
- The WED machine, can be useful for engineering institutes, for whom it is not possible to purchase and maintain the large-size WED machines available in the market.
Precision manufacturing, plastic moulds, small medical equipment, engineering institutes, research institutes
- This machine can be used by the following Small scale industries, Small engineering institutes, Research institutes
- Indian MSME sector (like watch manufacturers, die manufacturers) depends on specialized machining shops for cutting of complicated metallic parts with high precision as commercial wire EDM machines are costly. This adds to the time and money involved in the manufacturing. CM-WEDM can solve these issues and help to boost local MSME sector.
- Local manufacturing of small machine parts required for defense and medical sector can also be solved with this innovation. At the same time, this portable machine can also be used by various R&D sectors to prepare complicated shapes and parts for testing and characterization.
- Information about the utility of the customizable miniature WEDM can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyOt7Ra93Zg
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