Experimental and numerical investigations in electro-chemical milling

This paper presents experimental and numerical investigations into electro-chemical (EC) milling of simple features such as slots and pockets. Preliminary experimental investigations into the machining of a slot enabled appropriate process parameters to be selected; these were then used to machine a simple square pocket and finally a pocket with a human-being shaped protrusion. These features were machined with tools having circular and square cross-sections. The pocket with the protrusion was machined with tool paths of zig-zag and contour-parallel type. The experimental results indicated that the machining accuracy depends upon, amongst other things, on the tool shape and process parameters. A boundary element of the EC machining process was used to predict the shape of the pockets and in most cases, the predicted shapes compared favourably with the actual machined features. (C) 2015 CIRP.