Experimental investigation on the suitability of ozonated electrolyte in travelling-wire electrochemical machining

Abstract

Machining of nickel alloys, particularly Monel 400 alloys, plays an important role in numerous applications of aircraft and marine industries. Machining of these alloys, with complicated shapes, through conventional machine tools is a cumbersome task. Therefore, an experimental research was made to investigate the travelling-wire electrochemical machining (TWECM) characteristics of Monel 400 alloys. TWECM has the benefit of negligible tool wear and stress-free machining. The improper removal of contaminants, mostly oxides on the specimen surface, reduces the performance of TWECM. In this direction, ozonated aqueous NaCl was used as an electrolyte in order to enhance the machining performance of TWECM. The predominant TWECM process parameters i.e. applied voltage (V), electrolyte concentration (EC) and electrolyte flow rate (U) were considered to investigate the performance measures of material removal rate (MRR) and surface roughness (Ra). The microstructure of surface of the Monel 400 alloys specimen machined with TWECM was studied to understand the effect of electrolyte during the machining. Maximum of 90% increase in MRR was observed because of this new electrolyte. The surface roughness was also decreased considerably up to 32%. The contour plots were drawn to study the individual and interactive effect of process parameters on performance measures.