Recent Development of Laser Guided EDM Technology

Discharge is widely used in welding, micro-machining, internal combustion engine ignition. Despite this ubiquity, controlling and shaping its discharge along the design path remains challenging. Three beams - the standard Gaussian light, Bezier beam, Airy spot, etc. are set between the two wire. Full width at half maximum 10mm, laser energy 15mJ, pulse width 50fs. The design concept of this solution is to use the laser to ionize the inter-wire air to create an optimized path for discharge (15 kV across a 5 cm gap). Both Bessel and Airy beams produce a more optimized discharge path, yet Gauss is very chaotic and unpredictable. The difference here is mainly due to the difference in electric field strength in different bundles. The high-intensity regions of the sub-diffraction Bessel beam and the center of the beam are respectively 7 and 20 microns, much smaller than the diameter of the Gaussian beam of 50 microns. The international cooperation team further studied the electric field damage threshold of three cases, and found that the Airy bundle and the Bessel bundle were 3.5 times and 10 times lower respectively. Laser-guided sparking Surprisingly, even with the addition of obstacles between the two wires, the discharge still occurs. Under the Bessel and Airy beam transports, the beam is restored and the electric field continues to discharge after the unaffected path. According to Matteo Clerici, the next job to figure out the limits of the technology, two questions he asked were: How far can we bend the discharge? How high current can we transfer in this way?

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