Setup Planning Automation for Six-Axis Wire Electrical Discharge Machining

A modern six-axis wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) system is capable of producing more complex geometries than 2D, 2½D, or ruled surface parts. The rotational axis on a six-axis WEDM system allows a part to be rotated while using a cutting wire to fabricate it. However, limited automation for process planning six-axis WEDM systems requires significant time and effort must be put into process planning. Even with commercially-available computer-aided design (CAD) software, it is difficult to produce process plans for a six-axis WEDM system. Toward automatic development of process plans, a method of determining such setup plans, including the number of setup orientations and rotational axis movements, is presented in this paper. Tangent visibility analysis results presented in our prior research are used to guide the setup, and intermediate coordinate systems are defined in order to classify the tangent visibility results. A greedy algorithm is developed to determine the set of intermediate coordinates and setup orientations for six-axis WEDM.