Title: Experimental study of surface properties and material transfer mechanism in powder mixed electric discharge machining of Ti-6Al-4V alloy

Authors: Sanjeev Kumar; Rupinder Singh

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chandigarh Engineering College, Landran (Mohali) –140307, Punjab, India ' Department of Production Engineering, Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, Gill Road, Gill Park, Ludhiana-141006, Punjab, India

Abstract: This paper reports the changes in surface properties of Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy through material transfer mechanism using manganese powder mixed electric discharge machining (PMEDM) process. Surface properties were measured in terms of micro-hardness and surface roughness. Two machine input parameters namely peak current (Ip) and pulse-on-time (Ton) were varied at three levels during the experimentation. Experimental results show improvement in micro-hardness by 72.70%, with better surface finish. Qualitative analysis of selected samples was performed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and energy dispersive spectrograph (EDS) analyser. Significant transfers of different elements from electrode as well as manganese powder mixed dielectric were observed either in free form or compound form on machined surface.

Keywords: titanium; Ti-6Al-4V; Taguchi; electric-discharge; material; transfer; powder; micro-hardness; surface; microstructure.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMMP.2018.097219

International Journal of Microstructure and Materials Properties, 2018 Vol.13 No.5, pp.358 - 373

Accepted: 27 Jul 2018
Published online: 04 Jan 2019 *

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