Improving quartz micro-machining performance by magnetohydrodynamic and zinc-coated assisted traveling wire-electrochemical discharge machining process

Abstract

In this industrial revolution era, machining of advanced non-conducting material like quartz is difficult and costly with existing conventional machining processes. Further its high hardness, brittleness and non-conducting nature add-up to machining difficulties. Traveling Wire-electrochemical discharge machining (TW-ECDM) process has a good potential of machining of quartz material. TW-ECDM process is a hybrid and complex combination of electrochemical machining (ECM) and wire-electrical discharge (W-EDM) machining process. However, due to poor electrolysis process, sparking phenomenon is not steady and uniform at higher machining depth. In the present work, the authors have tried to investigate the feasibility of Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) assisted TW-ECDM process for machining of quartz. This MHD approach produces the magnetic field which helps to improve the electrolysis process, accuracy, and efficiency. Also, first-time zinc-coated brass wire of diameter 0.15 mm has been used to improve the machining performance. A hybrid approach of Taguchi robust design and ANOVA was used to analyze the process performance. Experimental results reveal that the MHD approach enhances the material removal rate (MRR) and reduces the surface rousghness (Ra) as compared to without MHD approach. The improvement in MRR was found from 25.35% to 83.72% and Ra reduced from 9.06% to 28.79%/ Additionally, an experimental result shows that quartz machined by TW-ECDM with MHD approach yielded longer and straight machined cut with less kerf width. Henceforth, the proposed hybrid MHD and zinc-coated brass wire approach is simple, easy, economically viable, environmental friendly and does not require any major changes in the existing machining setup. Moreover, the length of cut, kerf width and machine profile were also analyzed by scanning electron microscope.