Power supply for the investigation of pulse electrochemical processes

Recently, there has been a tendency in the industry to use electrochemical processing methods based on the use of milli- and microsecond pulses of different polarity and amplitude instead of a direct current. The use of a pulsed current in many cases makes it possible to obtain the desired effect by cheaper means and to provide additional controllability of the electrochemical process by adjusting the time parameters of the current pulses. This also ensures reduction of the energy costs of the polishing and cleaning process of surfaces as compared to direct current processing and increasing the efficiency of processing when the rate of smoothing the surface microroughness referred to the total removal of the metal rises significantly. For example, the application of bipolar pulses in polishing of many metallic materials eliminates the use of expensive and hazardous chromium electrolytes. The use of pulse mode during electrolyte-plasma polishing makes it possible to achieve the reduction of energy consumption and to increase of process efficiency while maintaining high intensity, processing quality and environmental safety. In order to study the effect of pulses parameters and the duration of a pause between them on the characteristics of the surface of parts made of various metallic materials in electrochemical and electrolyte-plasma processing modes the special power supply was modeled, designed and manufactured. The power supply provides the possibility of regulation frequency, the duration of the positive and negative pulses and the duration of the pauses between them a wide range. It makes it possible to generate current pulses up to 50 A at a voltage of 0 to 400 V of positive and negative polarities and is able to regulate their duration in the range from 10.0 μs to 8.1 s with the possibility of changing the ratio of the pulse duration and pauses from 1:1 to 1:9.