Title: An experimental investigation on electro discharge machining of Inconel 601

Authors: Chandramani Upadhyay; Rahul; Saurav Datta; Siba Sankar Mahapatra; Bibhuti Bhusan Biswal

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769008, Odisha, India ' Department of Industrial Design, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769008, Odisha, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769008, Odisha, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769008, Odisha, India ' Department of Industrial Design, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela 769008, Odisha, India

Abstract: The paper reports an experimental investigation on electro-discharge machining of Inconel 601 using copper electrode. Based on L27 orthogonal array, experiments have been conducted by considering controllable process parameters: peak current, pulse-on-time, gap voltage, duty factor and flushing pressure. The following machining responses: material removal rate (MRR), electrode wear rate (EWR), roughness average (Ra) and surface crack density (SCD) (developed on EDMed surface of Inconel 601) have been considered. Satisfaction function and distance-based approach (in conjugation with Taguchi method) has been proposed to select the most favourable parameters setting to satisfy optimised MRR, EWR, Ra and SCD. Predicted optimal setting has been compared to that of obtained by grey-Taguchi approach. SEM micro-graphs have been analysed as well to infer important observations in terms of surface irregularities incurred on the end product of EDMed Inconel 601.

Keywords: electro-discharge machining; EDM; Inconel 601; orthogonal array; satisfaction function; Taguchi method; grey-Taguchi.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2018.091901

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2018 Vol.29 No.2, pp.223 - 251

Received: 23 Feb 2016
Accepted: 25 Jun 2016

Published online: 21 May 2018 *

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