Electrolyte jet machining of Ti1023 titanium alloy using NaCl ethylene glycol-based electrolyte

Abstract

Abstract Titanium alloy is increasingly used in industries due to its outstanding properties but machining of such difficult-to-cut metal faces lots of challenges. As an advanced electrochemical machining (ECM) method, electrolyte jet machining (EJM) is a potential alternative for machining of titanium alloy. However, oxide layer usually forms in traditional water-based electrolyte, which prevents uniform dissolution and consequently deteriorates the machining accuracy. To overcome the oxide layer, a novel electrolyte with organic solvent, NaCl ethylene glycol (EG)-based solution, was introduced in EJM of a typical titanium alloy (Ti1023) in this work. The current efficiency curves in NaCl water-based and EG-based electrolytes were experimentally measured, which show opposite behavior. Besides, machining experiments were conducted using different electrolytes. The results show that NaCl EG-based electrolyte helps to avoid formation of oxide layer throughout the EJM process, leading to better comprehensive performance than water-based electrolyte, especially in superimposed translating EJM. In addition, parametric effects on machining performance using NaCl EG-based electrolyte were investigated as the hint for selecting optimum machining conditions. Furthermore, high electrolyte temperature was proposed in this work to enable usage of small nozzle in EJM with EG-based electrolyte for miniaturization of machined geometry.