Title: State of art in wire electrical discharge machining process and performance

Authors: Amitava Mandal; Amit Rai Dixit

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad-826004, Jharkhand, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad-826004, Jharkhand, India

Abstract: Wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) is one of the most widely used electro-thermal-based non-traditional machining process, which can be applied for almost the whole range of electrically conductive materials irrespective of their hardness. The rapid, repetitive and discrete spark discharge between the wire tool and job immersed in a dielectric medium leads to build up rapid heat and remove the unwanted material from the parent material by means of melting, spalling and chemical reaction. In recent years, researchers have explored a number of ways to improve the WEDM process performance by analysing the different factors that affect the quality characteristics. The experimental and theoretical studies show that process performance can be improved considerably by proper selection of tooling, material and operating parameters. This paper reviews the research work carried out so far in the area of machining different materials by WEDM. The review presents a report about the influence of WEDM process parameters and studies the improvement of the process performance.

Keywords: wire EDM; electrical discharge machining; WEDM process parameters; material removal rate; MRR; surface integrity; dimensional accuracy; tool wear; electro-discharge machining.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMMM.2014.063918

International Journal of Machining and Machinability of Materials, 2014 Vol.16 No.1, pp.1 - 21

Received: 23 Aug 2013
Accepted: 16 Dec 2013
Published online: 09 Aug 2014 *

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