Energetic consumption modeling of micro-EDM process

In this work, the implementation of an energetic model capable of predicting the energy consumption of a micro-electro discharge (micro-EDM) machine is presented. The developed model requires two main inputs: the estimate of the power absorbed by each subsystem composing the machine tool and the operation times, which includes the machining times. The power contributions can be determined via machine data sheets and via measurements. The energy consumption of a machine tool is due to two main contributions, ascribed to auxiliary units and to the manufacturing process itself. The developed model has been validated considering the micro-EDM milling of a circular pocket. The comparison between the estimated and measured energy consumption shows that the model is not only very accurate, but also very sensitive to the correct estimate of the machining times. Indeed, when the correction of the erosion time is operated by considering the actual value obtained by experiments instead of the one estimated by the CAD/CAM, the error referring to each energy contribution estimated by the model is greatly reduced. Furthermore, it can be noticed that most of the energy consumed by the micro-EDM manufacturing is actually inferable to the chiller unit.