Design of 10 kW switching power supply and discharge circuit for wire-cut electric discharge machine

A wire-cut electric discharge machine (WEDM) is a kind of die manufacturing machine which widely used in the machining industry with high precision. In developing a compact and high precision WEDM, the role of a high power density DC power supply is very important. In order to reduce the volume of the power supply, it is necessary to increase the switching frequency. The high frequency operation mainly reduces the volume of a transformer in the power supply. This paper is devoted to the investigation of WEDM based on AC-DC switched-mode power supplies and discharge circuits with a bipolar current pulse. The primary advantage of the bipolar current pulse is that worked dies are free from corrosion by electrolysis. Operating principles, structures, and design considerations are discussed. Experimental results are also presented in the paper.