Development of Technology and Strategies for the Machining of Ceramic Components by Sinking and Milling EDM

This paper investigates the manufacturability of B₄C, SiC, Si₃N₄-TiN by milling EDM and the performance of it has been compared to conventional sinking EDM. It is shown that due to the good flushing conditions, milling EDM performs well, even for the machining of ceramic materials with a rather low electrical conductivity (B₄C, SiC). Because the used milling EDM technique removes material in a layer by layer fashion (2D-machining), a new strategy for the machining of complex 3D-shapes in ceramic material has been developed. It consists of a milling EDM pre-machining step, followed by one or more finishing sinking EDM steps. The developed strategy has been validated on an industrial example and compared to a pure sinking EDM strategy. Time reductions of more than 50% were obtained.