Experimental study on Numerical Control Electrochemical Machining of rotary parts

Numerical control electrochemical machining (NC-ECM) is one of the most important development to electrochemical machining (ECM). In this paper, the preliminary experiments of machining rotary parts with different profile surface by use of NC-ECM are presented. First, the principle of machining rotary parts by NC-ECM and the experimental equipment are described. Then, the experiments of machining cylindrical surface, cam surface and curvilinear profile rotary surface are introduced and discussed. Experiments show: 1) The material removed depth per revolution decreases with the increase of the rotational speed of workpiece and increases almost linearly with the increase of the working voltage in machining cylindrical surface; 2) The surface roughness decreases with the increase of the rotational speed of workpiece and increases with the increase of the working voltage; 3) Through linkage control of the X-axis and the C-axis of the machine tool, the cam surface can be machined. And through linkage control of the X-axis and the Z-axis, the curvilinear profile rotary surface can be machined. These experiments indicate that the NC-ECM can be used to machine different profile rotary surfaces and have technical advantages for machining rotary parts which are made of difficult-to-cut materials. (5 pages)