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Precision Engineering
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Article history: Gap voltage can be used as an indicator on the direction of the electrode movement along a desired tool
Received 10 March 2016 path in electrical discharging machining (EDM) processes. However, due to the noise induced by electrical
Received in revised form 6 July 2016 discharges, the estimation of gap voltages is difficult due to the lack of an appropriate state space model.
Accepted 23 August 2016
In this paper, gap voltage signals are considered to be generated as a summation of colored noise through
Available online 28 August 2016
a linear filter and measurement noise. Obtained by the Yule–Walker auto-covariance method, the transfer
function of the linear filter can be converted into a state space model. The composite process noise and
Keywords:
the composite measurement noise are defined to derive the composite noise covariance matrices. A
Kalman filter
Stochastic process
Kalman filter can thus be designed based on the state space model and the noise covariance matrices.
Gap voltage Experimental results showed that, as compared with the traditional 10-point moving average filter, the
Electrical discharging machining (EDM) Kalman filter can decrease the average machining time as well as improve the discharging gap status.
© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction fr for the next servo period. Thus fr Ts is the displacement calcu-
lated by an interpolator that should be traveled during the next
Electrical discharging machining (EDM) is a process which can servo period, where Ts is the servo period. When the gap voltage is
remove workpiece materials by a series of electrical discharges higher than the servo voltage (Vest > Vs ), the electrode should move
occurring between an electrode and a workpiece [1,2]. Unlike in a forward along the trajectory to reduce the gap width. By contrast,
milling machining, the movement of servo axes of an EDM machine when the gap voltage is lower than the servo voltage (Vest < Vs ), the
are not only dependent on movement commands, but also deter- electrode should retract to increase the gap width so as to leave a
mined by the gap status between an electrode and a workpiece deteriorated gap condition. The integrator 1/s in the block diagram
[3]. From the control point of view, there are two control loops in means that the integral of the feedrate within the servo period is
an EDM process: the inner loop is the servo control loop, whose the position command to the servo loop, and the gain of −1 reflects
function is to position the servo axes; and the outer loop is the gap the fact that a positive error will reduce the gap width, and vice
width control, whose function is to maintain an appropriate gap verse. In this paper, the existing gap width control strategy was
width. To maintain a stable machining, the gap width between the used, which, as shown in Fig. 2, is a nonlinear function fr = Ke (V)
tool electrode and the workpiece should be kept to a distance of relating feedrate (fr ) to gap voltage difference (V). This function
10–100 m [3]. As a direct measurement of the gap width during was obtained empirically by the EDM machine manufacturer.
discharging is difficult, average gap voltage [4] and ignition delay In an ideal scenario, when a short pulse or an arc is detected, the
[5] and time ratio of each gap state [6–8] are the three types of vari- electrode will retract quickly so as to move away from the occur-
ables that can be used as feedback signals to control the gap width. rence of arcs. In practice, however, it is not easy to achieve such
Average gap voltage is more commonly used for its simplicity in an ideal scenario. To keep a stable gap width, there are basically
implementation. two tasks involved: one is the design of a gap width controller, and
A gap width control block diagram when gap voltage is used to the other is the estimation of feedback signals, such as gap voltage
maintain the gap width is shown in Fig. 1. Vs is the preset servo volt- signals.
age and Vest is the filtered gap voltage. Given the voltage difference To design a gap width controller, it is important to build a
V = Vest − Vs , a function Ke (V) is used to compute the feedrate dynamic model for EDM processes. Due to the difficulties in mod-
eling EDM processes, fuzzy logic [9–11], neural networks [12,13],
and genetic algorithm [14] are often used to model the dynam-
∗ Corresponding author. ics of EDM processes and to help to design a gap width controller.
E-mail address: xixuecheng@gmail.com (X.-C. Xi). Many researchers developed various servo controllers for EDM
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.precisioneng.2016.08.003
0141-6359/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
X.-C. Xi et al. / Precision Engineering 47 (2017) 182–190 183
∼ r0 (0), mean-
In this paper, it is assumed that r(0) = r0 (0) + v2 = where x(k) is the state vector. The matrices of A, C, G and H are
ing that the measurement noise is negligible as compared with the obtained from the transfer function Gw (q−1 ) from w(k) to y0 (k) as
gap voltage. With this assumption and Eq. (4), the covariance matrix in Eq. (2). A, C, G and H are written, respectively, as
of R0 can be approximated by R, i.e., ⎡ ⎤
−a1 −a2 ··· −an−1 −an
⎡ ⎤ ⎢ ⎥
r(0) r(1) ··· r(M − 1) ⎢ 1 0 ··· 0 0 ⎥
⎢ r(M − 2) ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ r(1) r(0) ···
⎥ A=⎢
⎢
0 1 ··· 0 0 ⎥
⎥ (13)
R0 ∼
=R=⎢ .. .. .. .. ⎥ (5) ⎢ ⎥
⎣ ⎦ .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . ⎣ . . . . . ⎦
r(M − 1) r(M − 2) ··· r(0) 0 0 0 1 0
⎡ ⎤
To compute the coefficients of the transfer function Gw (q−1 ), the 1
Yule–Walker equation is used as ⎢0⎥
⎢ ⎥
G=⎢ . ⎥ (14)
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ c1 ⎤ ⎡ ⎤ ⎣ .. ⎦
r(0) r(1) · · · r(M − 1) r(1)
⎢ r(1) r(0)
⎢
· · · r(M − 2) ⎥ ⎢ c2
⎥ ⎢ r(2) ⎥ 0
⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥ ⎢
⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥=⎢ . ⎥
⎣
.. .. .. ..
⎦ ⎣ .. ⎥ ⎣ . ⎥ (6)
C = −b0 a1 −b0 a2 ··· −b0 an−1 −b0 an
. ⎦
(15)
. . . .
. ⎦
r(M − 1) r(M − 2) ··· r(0) r(M) H = b0 (16)
cM
It is noted that the conversion from a transfer function to a space
where ci are the coefficients that need to be solved. Eq. (6) can also model is not unique. Here in this paper, the canonical form as listed
be written in a compact matrix form as in Eqs. (13)–(16) is adopted (P85 of [21]). H =/ 0 because the orders
of the numerator and denominator of Gw (q−1 ) in Eq. (2) are both
Rc = r (7) equal to n in terms of q.
For the process noise w(k) and the measurement noise v(k), the
where R is the covariance matrix as in Eq. (5) and the coefficient two covariance matrices, Q(k) and R(k), and the cross-covariance
vector c can be obtained by matrix, N(k), are defined as
3. Design of a Kalman filter for EDM processes R̄(k) = E[(Hw(k) + v(k))(wT (k)H T + vT (k))]
With the state space model Eq. (12) and the three composite 3.3. Steady-state gain from y(k) to ŷ(k)
noise covariance matrices(Eqs. (23)–(25)), a Kalman filter can be
designed based these information. The raw measured data of the gap voltage from the A/D device of
At the current instant k, the calculations of a Kalman filter can the EDM machine is in integer forms. To avoid possible numerical
be separated into two stages: the measurement update stage and instability problems in matrix calculations, the raw voltage data
the time update stage [20]. During the measurement update stage, is preprocessed by removing the DC component and then scaled
a newly obtained measurement y(k) at instant k is used to update down to a range of [−0.5, 0.5]. However, it was found that the output
the a priori state vector x̂(k|k − 1) which was computed at instant range of the steady-state Kalman filter is not in the same range
(k − 1), thus the a posteriori state vector x̂(k|k) is computed as as the input. As the gap voltage is used for judging the electrode
movement directions, it is desirable that the range of the output
x̂(k|k) = x̂(k|k − 1) + M(k)(y(k) − C x̂(k|k − 1) (26) of the steady-state Kalman filter is the same as that of the input.
v̂(k|k) = Kv (k)(y(k) − C x̂(k|k − 1)) (27) To this end, the steady-state Kalman filter can be considered as a
linear system, in which the measured signal y(k) is the input, and
the filtered output ŷ(k) and the estimated state vector x̂(k) are the
x̂(k + 1|k) = Ax̂(k|k) + v̂(k|k) = Ax̂(k|k − 1) + L(k)(y(k) − C x̂(k|k − 1)) outputs. The task here is to derive the transfer function Gyŷ (z) from
(28) y(k) to ŷ(k). The state space model in steady state is written as
where the gain matrices M(k), Kv (k), and L(k) are defined as x̂(k|k) = x̂(k|k − 1) + M(y(k) − C x̂(k|k − 1) (35)
Yˆk (z)
To start with the recursive calculation, the initial condition of = C(I − MC)(zI − A + LC)−1 L + CM (42)
Yk (z)
P(k|k − 1) is used as
−1
= C̄(zI − Ā) B̄ + D̄ (43)
P(1|0) = pI (33)
Ny (z)
where I is an identity matrix of n-order, p is a scalar. Here p is chosen = (44)
Dy (z)
as 100 in this paper.
where Ā = A − LC, B̄ = L, C̄ = C(I − MC), and D̄ = CM. Ny (z) and
3.2. Steady-state Kalman filter Dy (z) are the numerator and denominator of the transfer function
Yˆk (z)/Yk (z), respectively. By setting z = 1, the steady-state gain from
y(k) to ŷ(k) can be obtained as
P = APAT + Q̄ − L CPC T + R̄ LT Yˆk (z)
Ny (1)
Gyŷ = = (45)
Yk (z)
Dy (1)
−1 z=1
= APAT + Q̄ − (APC T + N̄)(CPC T + R̄) (CPAT + N̄ T ) (34)
For easy reference, the flow chart of the implementation of a
steady-state Kalman filter is illustrate in Fig. 3, where, yread (k) and
For an EDM machining process which usually lasts for a long yest (k) are the reading and estimate of the gap voltage, respectively,
time, the error covariance matrix P(k) will reach a constant matrix scale() is a function for scaling a voltage reading to a value in [−0.5,
in a steady state after a transient period. To alleviate the compu- 0.5] and scaleback() is a function for scaling a value in [−0.5, 0.5]
tational load in a real-time system, a steady-state Kalman filter back to the range of voltage readings.
can be actually implemented, where the constant gain matrices L
and M are used. While the loss resulting from the use of a steady- 4. Experimental results
state Kalman filter is negligible, the gain by using a steady-state
Kalman filter is significant for a real-time control system as matrix 4.1. Modelling of gap voltage dynamics
calculations have been largely reduced, especially for high order
systems. A series of machining tests were carried out on an HE70 EDM
The steady-state Kalman filter can be derived from the time- machine (Shanghai HanSpark Co.). The schematic of the exper-
varying ones, with the time-varying error covariance matrix P(k) imental setup is shown in Fig. 4. For this study, the computer
replaced by a constant matrix P as in Eq. (34). The Matlab function numerical control (CNC) system of the EDM machine was devel-
kalman can be used to compute the matrics L, M and P in steady oped by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the original CNC system
state. was bypassed. The EDM machine is controlled by an industrial PC
186 X.-C. Xi et al. / Precision Engineering 47 (2017) 182–190
Fig. 5. (a) Original gap voltage reading; (b) 10 point moving average of gap voltage.
with a PMAC PCI motion control card. The CNC software is run-
ning on Ubuntu 10.04 with the RTAI real-time patch. The real-time
sampling period on the PC is set to 2 ms and the servo period on
PMAC is 0.88 ms. The real-time communication between PC and
PMAC is achieved through the dual-ported RAM (DPRAM) on the
PMAC PCI card. The raw gap voltage is firstly measured by an ACC-
28A DAC card connected with the PMAC card. The voltage DAC
reading is then sent to the PC through DPRAM.
The original filter for gap voltages used in the EDM machine is
a 10-point moving average filter which is defined as
9
y(k) = ai u(k − i)
i=0
(46)
10 − i
ai = , i = 0, . . ., 9
10
Table 1
y(k) b0
Dynamic model of gap voltage, w(k) = Ts =2 ms.
A(q−1 )
Table 3
Machining test by 10-point moving average (hole depth = 5 mm, diameter = 10 mm).
Table 2
EDM machining parameters.
Table 4
Hole depth(mm) 5 10 Machining test by Kalman filter (hole depth = 5 mm, diameter = 10 mm).
Electrode Poco EDM-C3 Poco EDM-4
No Machining time (s) Retraction time ratio Carbon deposit
Workpiece Tool steel Tool steel
1 636.790 0.1759 No
Open voltage (V) 150 150
2 537.622 0.1628 No
Peak current (A) 28 28
3 444.402 0.1489 No
Pulse on (m) 60 60
4 756.240 0.1782 No
Pulse off (m) 40 40
5 533.226 0.1502 No
Up time (s) 0.6 1
Down period (s) 5 5 Average 581.656 0.1632 –
188 X.-C. Xi et al. / Precision Engineering 47 (2017) 182–190
Fig. 9. Gap voltage signals at the depth of 4mm with 10-point moving average filter:
(1) measured gap voltage; (2) moving average filter.
Fig. 8. Machined holes by: (a) moving average filter (the bottom has carbon
deposit); (b) moving average filter (the circular black area are resulted from arcs);
(c) Kalman filter.
Fig. 11. Comparison of machining time including extraction time for a hole with depth = 10 mm and diameter = 10 mm.
Table 5 5. Conclusion
Comparison of machining time (excluding electrode jumping time) for a hole with
depth = 10 mm, diameter = 10 mm).
Estimation of gap voltages is crucial for gap width control in EDM
Filter Machining Retraction time Carbon deposit processes. However, strong noise induced by electrical discharges
time (s) ratio (%)
between an electrode and a workpiece makes the estimation of
4278.314 0.2383 Yes gap voltages a difficult task. Considering the stochastic nature of an
Moving average 3613.214 0.2293 Yes EDM process, a Kalman filter is used to estimate gap voltages in an
3733.266 0.2231 Yes
optimal statistical error sense.
Average 3874.931 0.2303 – Gap voltage signals are thought of being generated as a sum-
3468.318 0.2166 No mation of colored noise through a linear filter and measurement
Kalman filter 3346.290 0.2107 No noise. The transfer function of the filter, with the same order for
3148.254 0.2038 No the numerator and denominator, is built up by the Yule–Walker
Average 3320.954 0.2103 – covariance method. A state space model is then derived from the
transfer function. The composite process noise and the compos-
ite measurement noise are used in the derivation of the composite
A hole with a depth of 10 mm was also machined to compare the
noise covariance matrices. With the state space model as well as
machining performance when the moving average and the Kalman
the covariance matrices, a Kalman filter can thus be designed. Scal-
filter were used, respectively. In this test, the material of the elec-
ing is both needed in the pre-processing and post-processing of the
trode has been changed to Poco EDM-4, which does not contain
Kalman filter. A steady-state gain from the measured gap voltage
copper and the material of the workpiece is still tool steel. Though
to the output of a Kalman filter is used in the post-processing.
the material of the electrode has been changed, the same Kalman
Experimental results show that, as compared with the 10-point
filter based on the model as listed in Table 1 is used, where the
moving average filter, the Kalman filter can reduce the average
model was obtained when the material of the electrode is Poco
machining time. When machining a 5 mm-deep hole, the reduction
EDM-C3. To cope with the increase of the hole depth, the electrode
percentage in average machining time is 25.7%. When machining a
jump speed is increased. The machining conditions for the 10-mm
10 mm-deep hole, the reduction percentage in average machining
hole are listed in the third column of Table 2. For each filter, three
time is 14.3%. The use of the Kalman filter is also found to be able
tests were carried out and the results are listed in Table 5. It can
to improve the discharging gap status.
be noted from Table 5 that the average machining time by using
The Kalman filter designed in this paper has shown its advan-
the Kalman filter is 14.3% less than that by the 10-point moving
tages over the traditional moving average filter. Future research
average filter.
will focus on adaptive Kalman filters for estimating gap voltages
Fig. 11 shows the two curves of the machining time with respect
to cope with varying machining conditions, and the design of an
to the hole depth when the moving average filter and the Kalman
advanced gap width controller.
filter are used, respectively. It can be noticed that at discrete values
of the hole depth ranging from −1 mm to −10 mm, the machining
times by using the Kalman filter are all less than those by using the Acknowledgements
moving average filter. This is because with the increase in the hole
depth, the gap conditions become deteriorated, and the machining This research is financially supported by National Natural
time for each single millimeter has been elongated. The advantage Science Foundation of China (No. 51675340), National Science
of the Kalman filter over the moving average filter becomes more and Technology Major Project(No. 2014ZX04001061), Gas Tur-
obvious with the increase in hole depth. bine Research Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (No.
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