Experimental Investigations during Dry EDM of Inconel - 718

Abstract

Dry EDM is a modification of the conventional EDM process in which the liquid dielectric is replaced by a gaseous medium. Tubular tool electrodes are used and as the tool rotates, high velocity gas is supplied through it into the discharge gap. The flow of high velocity gas into the gap facilitates removal of debris and prevents excessive heating of the tool and work piece at the discharge spots. It is now known that apart from being an environment- friendly process, other advantages of the dry EDM process are low tool wear, lower discharge gap, lower residual stresses, smaller white layer and smaller heat affected zone. Keeping literature review into consideration, in this paper, an attempt has been made by selecting compressed air as a dielectric medium, with Inconel - 718 as a work piece material and copper as a tool electrode. Experiments are performed using Taguchi DoE orthogonal array to observe and analyze the effects of different process parameters to optimize the response variables such as material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness (Ra) and tool wear rate (TWR). In the current work, a unit has been developed to implement dry EDM process on existing oil based EDM machine.