Title: Improvement of micro-EDM performances with aid of vibration

Authors: K. Mishra; P. Mukhopadhyay; B.R. Sarkar; B. Doloi; B. Bhattacharyya

Addresses: Production Engineering Department, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-32, India ' Production Engineering Department, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-32, India ' Production Engineering Department, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-32, India ' Production Engineering Department, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-32, India ' Production Engineering Department, Jadavpur University, Kolkata-32, India

Abstract: Micro-electro-discharge machining (micro-EDM) process has great potential to machine difficult-to-cut and electrically conducting materials like aluminium, nickel, titanium and their alloys etc. This present research work intends to investigate during micro-holes drilling on pure aluminium by means of vibration at workpiece in electro-discharge machining process. The influences of different process variants such as polarity, peak current, direction of flushing and pulse on-time have been studied using experimental results, which were obtained based on L₁₈ orthogonal array of Taguchi method and the suitable parametric combinations for optimum machining criteria have been searched out. Also, the effects of vibration on different machining performances, as well as surface quality and accuracy of the micro-holes have been investigated with a rotary vibrator, which has been indigenously designed and developed. The performance characteristics such as metal removal rate (MRR), tool wear rate (TWR) and roundness have been found to be improved on account of influence of the vibration of workpiece.

Keywords: micro-EDM; workpiece vibration; Taguchi; GRA; grey relational analysis; aluminium.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPTECH.2018.094081

International Journal of Precision Technology, 2018 Vol.8 No.1, pp.38 - 65

Received: 20 Feb 2017
Accepted: 17 Mar 2018
Published online: 14 Aug 2018 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article