Wire electro-discharge grinding (WEDG) and its application

A WEDG device, which is designed and developed for on-line machining of micro electrodes in micro-EDM with a floating pulley used for self-adjustment of tension and a gear pair and a rolling pulley pair used for drawing wire, and its operating principle, design concept, and engineering application are detailed. This device can be used to fabricate micro electrodes of less than ø15 μm in diameter and of more that 40 in aspect ratio (length/diameter). Some micro-EDM experiments were made with micro-shafts, micro-holes, and three-dimensional microstructure, and the experimental results show that the WEDG device is compact in structure, higher in machining accuracy, and good in adaptability.