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DESIGN AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF A MULTI-MODE
CONTROLLABLE RC PULSE GENERATOR
FOR MICRO-EDM
Man-Hong Hu *, Yong Li, Hao Tong
* State Key Laboratory of Tribology, Department of Precision Instruments and Mechanology, Tsinghua University,
Beijing, PR China
* hmh06@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn
Keywords: Micro-EDM, Controllable RC-pulse generator,
Micromachining
Abstract
A multi-mode controllable RC pulse generator is developed
with the state-of-art electronic technique. The circuit can
work at both pulse-train and isopulse mode, and a 100ns
open-circuit pulse on-time can be achieved. By drilling micro
via and blind holes, the influences of capacitance and pulse
parameters to the process are studied. For both pulse-train and
isopulse mode, the existence of the capacitance will lead to a
sharper rising edge, high density and less vibrating of the
discharge current, which results in a more effective metal
removal rate per pulse.
With the pulse-train mode, when the capacitance is smaller
than a certain value, with the increase of it, the machine time
decreases and the side discharge gap between electrode and
via hole is almost unchanged. The value of certain
capacitance is 15000pF with the controllable RC circuit. And
with the existence of the capacitance, the discharge can also
remove metal during pulse-off time, and a high discharge
frequency and machining speed can be achieved. With
isopulse mode, the discharge energy is more consistent, and
better surface roughness can be achieved.
1. Introduction
Pulse generator is one of the key technologies to Micro EDM
(electro discharge machining). According to the configuration
of discharge circuit, the pulse generator used in Micro-EDM
can be divided into four kinds, which are the RC relaxation
type, the controllable RC type, the single-switch transistor
type and the double-switch transistor type.
Most of the researchers focus on the RC relaxation-type or the
transistor-type pulse generator. Generally, the RC relaxation
based circuits can easily generate a short duration pulse with
high peak current, and are widely used in Micro-EDM. But it
relays on the dielectric to cut off the power applied to the
machined gap, so it’s very easily cause the abnormal
discharge and arc [5]. And using transistor-type circuit with
isopulse mode, which is mainly used in semi-finishing
machining for the long pulse-on duration, the machine speed
can be two or three times larger than the RC relaxation-type
and the discharge energy is uniform [2, 6]. However, the
process is still too slow for the industry application. A high
performance pulse generator is demanded to improve the
machining capabilities such as the machining speed and
surface roughness (Ra).
Consequently the controllable RC circuit is proposed [3]. This
kind of circuit is a combination of RC relaxation type and the
transistor type. A switch is added into the RC relaxation-type
circuit to cut off the current and to artificially restore
insulation between tool and work piece. When the
capacitance is reduced to stray capacitance, the controllable
RC circuit can be seen as a transistor-type. And in this study,
a multi-mode controllable RC pulse generator is developed
and its machining characteristics and influences to the
Micro-EDM process are studied.
2. The design of controllable RC pulse generator
for Micro-EDM
Fig. 1(a) shows the schematic of the multi-mode pulse
generator with controllable RC circuit and the control system.
The capacitance, resistant, MOSFET switch can be separately
added or removed from the pulse generator as the experiment
requirements.
The MCU (AT89C52) transfers the pulse setting data,
including the pulse-on time (ton), pulse-off time (toff), working
mode (pulse-train or isopulse) and so on, to the FPGA module,
whose inter clock frequency can be high to 250MHz. And the
FPGA module will generate the control pulse consequently.
Through the MOSFET driver, the MOSFET can connect or
cut off the DC power to the gap, and generate the pulses for
machining. A 100ns open-circuit pulse on-time can be
achieved. And the gap current measurement will provide the
average current to the PMAC as the basis for the fuzzy
control servo feeding system.
Fig. 1(b) shows the schematic of a composite snubber
circuit designed for the MOSFET driver to reduce the
energy losses generated by the high frequency switch of
MOSFET. The energy is absorbed by Ls and Cs, and will
be consumed by the Rs.

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Figure 1: Diagram of (a) the controllable RC circuit & control system and (b) the MOSFET driver

V A

Figure 2: Principle of pulse-train mode and isopulse mode Figure 3: Schematic of the experimental set-up

And as showed in Fig. 2, the pulse generator can work in both

pulse-train mode and isopulse mode. The pulse-train mode is Table 1: Machining conditions for controllable RC circuit
an open-loop control of the MOSFET. The MOSFET is
turned on or off for a pulse-on time (ton) or a pulse-off time Open circuit voltage 110 V
(toff) alternately in one cycle. However, the isopulse mode is a Polarity Electrode(-),
close-loop control. The MOSFET is turned on when the gap Work piece(+)
current feed back signal remains a low level. And it will be Charging resistance 45
turned off after a period of delay (ton) when the gap current Work piece material 65 Mn Steel ( 0.25mm),
feed back signal rises to a certain value. Then after a pulse-off SUS304 ( 0.5 mm)
time (toff), it is turned on again. So the actual discharging time Wire electrode Tungsten (0.1, 0.2 mm )
(td) is the pulse-on time (ton) in isopulse mode, while it is the Dielectric EDM oil
pulse-on time (ton) minus the ignition delay time (tr) in
pulse-train mode [1].
3.2 Influences of capacitance on the process
3 Result and discussion To evaluate the influences of capacitance to machining
process, via holes were drilled in  0.25mm 65Mn steel with
3.1 Setup of experimental apparatus and conditions a ¶0.01mm electrode. And the feed depth is set to 0.50 mm
to make sure that the electrode penetrates through the
Fig. 3 schematically describes the experimental apparatus. workpiece.
The controllable RC circuit applies the machine pulse to the
machining gap. And the gap voltage and current are Fig. 4 shows the waveforms obtained from the experiments.
monitored by the oscilloscope (TDS2012B). The discharge current has sharper rise edge with large
The rod Tungsten is used as the tool electrode. The electrode capacitance other than with stray capacitance, and the
is hold by the laboratory designed spindle head, which is discharge current density is also higher at the beginning of
controlled by the fuzzy control feed system to continuously discharge despite the peak pulse value. And this phenomenon
compensate the wear of tool electrode. The experimental can be observed in both pulse-train and isopulse mode.
conditions are showed in Table 1.


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Figure 6: Model of the controllable RC circuit (a)G1 on; (b)

G1 off

3.3 Influences of pulse parameters on the process

Figure 4: Picture of typical discharge waveforms generated
using pulse train mode with (a) C=2200pF and (b) C=stray
capacitance (ton=1­s, toff=5­s)
350
With pulse-train mode, by viewing the waveforms of gap
voltage and current, it was found that the discharge can be
found both in ton and toff. And even more discharges were
observed during toff time for the toff is usually longer than ton.
By analyzing the model of the controllable RC circuit (Fig. 6),
the MOSFET ’s output capacitor (Coss) increase dramatically
from 200 pF to 3800 pF at the beginning time when G1 is
turned off [4]. Therefore the Egap will not drop to zero
160 immediately during the pulse-off time. Also because the R2 is
Diameter of hole entrance (μm)

small usually and can be ignored, the Egap can be expressed as

155
300 Machine Time follows:
Diameter of hole entrance 150 t
Machine Time (s)

−
250
145 Egap + ER2 ≈ E ⋅ e τ
(1)
200 140
τ ≈ (R1 +R measure ) ⋅ (COSS + C ) (2)
135
150 The larger the τ, the slower will the Egap decrease to zero. As
130 can be seen in Fig. 7, Egap remains almost constant for the
100
125 Rmeasure and C are very large usually. Thus the discharge
frequency using controllable RC circuit is relatively high for
50 120
0 20000 40000 60000 80000 100000 the ability of discharging both in pulse-on and pulse-off time
Capcitance (pF) and the machining speed is faster.
Fig. 8 also shows that when the capacitance is too large to be
Figure 5: The influence of capacitance to the machine time charged to open voltage in one pulse-on time, which will lead
and entrance diameters with pulse-train mode (ton=5μs, to a multi-step charging of the machining gap. This can result
toff=25μs) in not only the variation of discharge energy but also the
instability of machining process. And this multi-step charging
Fig. 5 shows the influence of the capacitance to the machine is more harmful when using isopulse mode. So the parameters
time and entrance diameters under certain ton and toff. When including ton and C should be chosen carefully, and the
the value of capacitance is changed from stray capacitance to relationship between these two parameters can be calculated
10000pF, the machine time decreases, but the diameter of using the following equation to avoid the multi-step charging
hole-entrance does not change greatly, which shows that the in isopulse mode:
side discharge gap between electrode and via hole is almost
unchanged. Then when the capacitance value continually rises,
t on ≥ τ = R1 ⋅ C (2)
the machine time remains on a certain level, but the diameter With isopulse mode, the feed-back current is used as the signal
almost linearly increases with capacitance, which indicates of discharge’s beginning, thus the discharge time remains the
that the discharge gap increases accordingly. same and the discharge energy is more consistent comparing


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Figure 7: Typical waveform of discharge during pulse-off Figure 8: Waveform of Gap voltage and current with
time with pulse-train mode (ton=1­s, toff=5­s, C=10000pF) multi-step charging (ton=1­s, toff=5­s, C=33000pF)

Figure 9: Photos of bottom surfaces of machined blind hole (=0.05mm) under pulse-train (left) and isopulse (right) mode.
(ton=1­s, toff=5­s, C=2200pF˅with a ž0.2mm electrode on SUS304

with pulse-train mode. As shown in Fig. 9, although the The research presented in this paper was funded by State 863
discharge cavities on the bottom of machined blind hole are Plan (grant no 2007AA04Z346, 2009AA044205),
larger, the cavities are more uniform, and better surface
roughness is achieved. References
4 Conclusions
A multi-mode controllable RC-type pulse generator is
developed, and the research concentrates on evaluating the
characteristics of the pulse generator to the Micro-EDM
process. The major conclusions drawn from this study are
summarized as follows:
(1) The influences of capacitance to the process are studied.
For both pulse-train and isopulse mode, the existence of the
capacitance will lead to a sharper rising edge, high density
and less vibrating of the discharge current, which results in a
more effective metal removal rate per pulse.
With the pulse-train mode, when the capacitance is smaller
than a certain value, with the increase of it, the machine time
decreases and the side discharge gap between electrode and
via hole is almost unchanged. The value of certain
capacitance is 15000pF with the controllable RC circuit.
(2) The influences of pulse parameters to the process are also
studied. With the pulse-train mode, the discharge can also
remove metal during pulse-off time for the existence of the
capacitance, and a high discharge frequency and machining
speed can be achieved. With isopulse mode, the discharge
energy is more consistent, and better surface roughness can be
achieved.
Acknowledgements
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