The effects of electrode size and discharged power on micro-electro-discharge machining drilling of stainless steel

This article is about the measurement of actual micro-electro-discharge machining parameters and the statistical analysis of their influence on the process performances. In particular, the discharged power was taken into account as a comprehensive variable able to represent the effect of peak current and voltage on the final result. Thanks to the dedicated signal acquisition system, a correlation among the discharged power and the indexes representing the process parameters was shown. Finally, linear and non-linear regression approaches were implemented in order to obtain predictive equations for the most important aspects of micro-electro-discharge machining, such as the machining time and the electrode wear

Effect of electrical pulse parameters on the machining performance in EDM

411-415In electrical discharge machining (EDM) material is removed through periodical electrical discharges between the tool and workpiece. The electrical discharge energy which is transformed into heat in the discharge zone is of key importance in EDM. The machining performance of EDM is defined by the characteristics of electrical discharge pulse. For these reasons, the principle of EDM and the characteristics of electrical pulse parameters are analyzed in this paper. Discharge current and pulse duration are selected as the most important electrical pulse parameters. In addition, their influence on material removal rate, tool wear ratio, gap distance and surface roughness are experimentally investigated. The experiments are conducted on an manganese-vanadium tool steel using graphite tool electrodes. The study allows efficient identification of relevant electrical pulse parameters, and the results obtained represent a technological knowledge base for the selection of optimal EDM machining conditions

Reconfigurable optical logic in silicon platform

Abstract In this paper, we present a novel, scalable, and reconfigurable optical switch that performs multiple computational logic functions simultaneously. The free-carrier depletion effect is used to perform non-volatile switching operations due to its high speed and low power consumption. We adopt the concept of optical memory using a phase-change material to realize the non-volatile reconfigurability without a constant power supply, in addition to providing a large operating bandwidth required for reconfigurability. The proposed reconfigurable optical logic architecture is realized in a compact microdisk resonator configuration, utilizing both the carrier-depletion-based modulation and phase-change optical memory. This is the first time these two modulation schemes are implemented in the same optical microdisk for the purpose of reconfigurable optical logic