Title: An experimental study for evaluating speed parameters on surface roughness of LS-WEDT and its application in fabricating microelectrodes

Authors: Yadong Gong; Yao Sun; Xiaoteng Ma

Addresses: School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China ' School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China ' School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Northeastern University, Shenyang, China

Abstract: The demand for microelectrodes has greatly increased when the micromachining techniques have become a hot issue in modern industry. The non-contact of EDM process makes it have the unique superiority in fabricating microelectrodes. Therefore, this paper proposed a low speed wire electrical discharge turning (LS-WEDT) method to fabricate microelectrodes. Firstly, the influence of speed parameters including the rotated speed (V_n), feeding speed (V_s) and wire speed (V_w) involved in LS-WEDT are discussed. More importantly, the microelectrode made of CuW70 material with diameter of 58 μm is firstly and successfully fabricated by LS-WEDT. Furthermore, the scanning electron microscope observations disclosed that the microelectrode has good surface quality and high machining precision without ridges and bending. Besides, many small micro-voids with the diameter less than 1 μm can be observed on the microelectrode surface. Finally, the energy dispersive spectrograph analysis suggested the presence of foreign elements including zinc and oxygen on the microelectrode surface machined by LS-WEDT.

Keywords: LS-WEDT; microelectrodes; speed parameters; surface roughness.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAT.2018.094874

International Journal of Abrasive Technology, 2018 Vol.8 No.4, pp.261 - 277

Accepted: 16 May 2018
Published online: 25 Sep 2018 *

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