Effect of Grain Sizes of Stainless Steel on the Erosion Feature of Single Electrical Discharge Pulse

Abstract

Single electrical discharge pulse is the base unit of electrical discharge machining(EDM). Research on the erosion feature of single electrical discharge pulse is of great significance on understanding the process of electrical discharge machining. With the continuous decrease of energy which is output by pulse power, EDM is widely applied in the meso scale manufacturing, the feature size of components is close to the grain size of crystal materials. However, the properties in the grains are different from the grain boundary which will have significant effect on the manufacturing process. In this paper, thermal-properties difference between the grain and grain boundary is analyzed briefly. An experiment of single electrical discharge pulse is carried out on two kinds of stainless steel(1Cr18Ni9) which has the different grain size. The theory analysis and experimental results both indicate that the smaller the grain size, the larger diameter and depth of the electrical pits.