Effects of wire-EDM machining variables on surface roughness of newly developed DC 53 die steel: Design of experiments and regression model

Abstract

Abstract DC53 is a newly developed cold die steel from Daido Steel, Japan. It is an improvement over the familiar cold die steel SKD11. Because DC53 is a new die steel, only little information is available in literature for its machining characteristics. This paper presents an investigation of the effects of machining variables on the surface roughness of wire-EDMed DC53 die steel. In this study, the machining variables investigated were pulse-peak current, pulse-on time, pulse-off time, and wire tension. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) technique was used to find out the variables affecting the surface roughness. Assumptions of ANOVA were discussed and carefully examined using analysis of residuals. Quantitative testing methods on residual analysis were used in place of the typical qualitative testing techniques. Results from the analysis show that pulse-on time and pulse-peak current are significant variables to the surface roughness of wire-EDMed DC53 die steel. The surface roughness of the test specimen increases when these two parameters increase. Lastly, a mathematical model was developed using multiple regression method to formulate the pulse-on time and pulse-peak current to the surface roughness. The developed model was validated with a new set of experimental data, and the maximum prediction error of the model was less than 7%.