Fast Determination of the Material Removal Characteristics in Pulsed Electrochemical Machining

Electrochemical machining (ECM) of metallic materials is a complex manufacturing process. Currently the design of the process parameters and the cathode geometry is determined by expensive and inefficient experiments. This paper introduces a method for a fast determination of the material removal characteristics in pulsed electrochemical machining (PECM). The determination is performed by help of removal experiments using a PEMCenter 8000. As example the material removal characteristics of stainless steel 1.4301 under PECM conditions are shown. Based on the resulting mathematical description of the material removal characteristics a design of PECM processes by analytical calculations or multiphysics simulation is feasible.