Author : Maan Aabid Tawfiq and Azzam Sabah Hameed

Electric discharge machining(EDM) is one of the nonconventional machining process which has been used in manufacturing complex shapes on hard material that are difficult to cut by conventional processes, especially, die casting, parts of aircraft, medical equipment, automobile industries. Powder mixed electric discharge machining (PMEDM), has emerged as one of the advanced techniques in the direction of the enhancement of the capabilities of EDM. The objective of the present research is to study the influence of process parameters such as peak current, pulse on time, manganese, aluminum, and aluminum-manganese mixing powder concentration on surface roughness of different types of die steel (AISID3, AISID6, H13) with round copper electrode(20 mm diameter) on Surface roughness. Experiments have been designed using Taguchi method. Taguchi L27 orthogonal array has been selected for five factor 3 levels design. The surface integrity has evaluated in terms of surface roughness (SR). It is found that manganese powder concentration mixed in dielectric fluid significantly affect the surface roughness, minimum (SR) is obtained at a low peak current (4 A), pulse on (150μs), and (4g/L) concentration of manganese powder, the optimum SR is 0.981μm.

Keywords: EDM, PMEDM, SR, Taguchi method, ANOVA

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.5, No.5 (Oct-2015)