Title: Effect of tool size and cavity depth on response characteristics during electric discharge machining: an experimental investigation

Authors: Sudhanshu Kumar; Dilip Sen

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal (MP), India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal (MP), India

Abstract: In the present investigation, AISI304 material has been selected as the workpiece, and electrolytic copper as the tool electrode. For systematic investigation and understanding of the effect of tool size in terms of tool diameter and cavity depth along with other important electrical parameters namely, peak current, pulse-on-time, and gap voltage have been varied at three different values. The experiment has been designed using the fractional factorial (Taguchi) method. The effect of parameter settings is observed for material removal rate (MRR), tool wear rate (TWR), and surface roughness (R_a). Results reveal that a larger tool diameter yielded 13% more MRR and there is no significant effect of cavity depth on MRR, TWR, and surface quality. To perform experiments with other parameters set, smaller cavity depth can be used which can reduce the cost and time of experiments. Further, statistical analysis has been carried out to identify the interaction effect between the parameters.

Keywords: electrical discharge machining; EDM; AISI304; material removal rate; MRR; surface roughness; tool wear; tool size.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMMM.2023.129588

International Journal of Machining and Machinability of Materials, 2023 Vol.25 No.1, pp.1 - 20

Received: 09 May 2022
Accepted: 26 Aug 2022
Published online: 15 Mar 2023 *