Experimental Study During Electrical Discharge Machining of Reinforced Carbon Fiber Plastic Material

Abstract

Abstract: The proper selection of machining conditions and machining parameter is an important aspect, before going to machine a carbon-fiber composite material by Die sinking electrical discharge machining (EDM). Because these conditions will determine such important characteristics as; Material removal rate (MRR), Electrode wears rate (EWR), and Surface roughness (R). The purpose of this work is to determine the optimal values of machining parameters of electrical discharge machine, while machining carbon-fiber-composite with copper electrode. The work has been based on the affect of four design factors: pulse current(Ip) supplied by power supply system of electrical discharge machine (EDM), pulse-on-time(TON), gap voltage(Vg) and duty cycle () on such characteristic like material removal rate (MRR), electrode wear rate(EWR), and surface roughness(Ra) on work-piece surface. This work has been done by means of the technique of design of experiment (DOE), which provides us to perform the above-mentioned analysis with small number of experiments. In this work, a L9 orthogonal array is used to design the experiment. The adequate selection of machining parameters is very important in manufacturing system, because these parameters determine the surface quality and dimensional accuracy of the manufactured part. The optimal setting of the parameters are determined through experiments planned, conducted and analyzed using the Taguchi method. It is found that material removal rate (MRR) reduces substantially, within the region of experimentation, if the parameters are set at their lowest values, while the parameters set at their highest values increases electrode wear rate (EWR). Keywords: EDM, Material removal rate, Surface roughness, Tool wear rate,