Design and development of an intelligent process controller in LabVIEW environment for electro chemical discharge machining (ECDM)

The performance of ECDM machining, in terms of surface finish and rate of machining, is affected by many factors. Relationships between these factors and machining performance are highly non linear and complex in nature. Therefore, it is very difficult to develop a relationship between those factors and the machining performance with conventional mathematical modelling. This fact makes it very hard to formulate control strategies for process control of ECDM process. Various strategies for gap width control for electro discharge machining (EDM) have been studied in the past but there remains a need for effective and efficient gap width control system for ECDM. Thus, an intelligent gap width control system for ECDM is a useful approach to pursue. This paper presents a design and development of an intelligent process controller (IPC) for the ECDM process. Inter-electrode gap voltage and working current waveforms were obtained. NI-PCI-5112 8-bit digitizer was used to obtain the voltage and current waveform parameters. Pulses were classified into five groups by observing the waveforms. Various process variables were considered to investigate the best feedback signal. A motion control system was developed to control the inter electrode gap width for which a NI-PCI-7342 motion controller was employed. An adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) was developed to generate appropriate control signals according to the machining gap condition. The IPC was implemented in LabVIEW environment.