Design and construction of a Virtual Reality wire cut Electrical Discharge Machining system

Wire Electrical Discharge Machining (WEDM) uses a metallic wire to cut a product profile such as extrusion dies and blanking punches. The cost of possession and maintenance of the WEDM equipment is generally high. Hence, it is important to reduce the machine operation training cost, to provide simulation verification, and to investigate the correctness of the NC codes. This paper presents the development of a Virtual Reality (VR) based WEDM system which can emulate a real WEDM machine. The research result can be adopted to serve as a cost-effective tutoring system that has the benefits of improving the inefficient and dangerous drawbacks in operating the real machine. The developed system can provide an effective application in digital education and training environment for academics and industries.