Design of a fuzzy controller for the adaptive control of WEDM process

This paper addresses the design of a fuzzy controller for the control of the wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) process. The power consumption and short circuit ratio are chosen as control parameters. Incorporated with pulse trains analysis and experience, fuzzy rules for the control of the WEDM process are formulated. A DSP-based on-line pulse monitoring system is developed, and the fuzzy control system is implemented on a PC-486. In the developed control system, a reference power level is specified beforehand, and feed is adjusted according to the computed actual machining power. Off time is regulated automatically so that short circuit ratio will not exceed a specific value. Fine tuning of feed and pulse off-time is conducted if the variation in the average ignition delay time is too large. Experiments show that the developed control strategy results in very satisfactory transient and steady state responses as compared with a conventional control scheme.