Automatic EDM electrode splitting based on volume decomposition

Plastic parts such as automotive panel are becoming much more complex and compact than before. In mould manufacturing industry, a lot of delicate substructures are usually processed by EDM. To alleviate the burden of time-consuming electrode design on mould designers, automation in EDM electrode design is necessary. A volume decomposition based algorithm is proposed in this paper to automate the electrode splitting. A sorting step is added to traditional MCC algorithm to ensure the stack type design. This approach is more formalized and efficient than hint-based algorithm and has the potential to be extended to curved objects.