Investigation of machining characteristics of aluminium 6061 by wire cut EDM process

Abstract

The investigation of machining characteristics is one the most important aspects to take into consideration in the majority of manufacturing processes and particularly in processes related to Wire cut Electrical Discharge Machining (WEDM) being widely used in die and Tool making industries, aerospace, aeronautics and nuclear industries. Hence it’s wide use and has high hardness requires unconventional machining such as WEDM, the investigation of machining characteristics of Aluminium 6061 will provide a more economic and efficient method in it. Wire electric discharge machining process is a highly complex, time varying and stochastic process. WEDM is extensively used in machining of conductive materials where precision is of major factor. The process output is affected by larger number of input variables. Therefore suitable input variables for the wire cut electrical discharge machining (WEDM) process should be selected. Rough cutting operation in wire EDM is treated as challenging one, because improvement of more than one performance measures. Metal removal rate (MRR), surface finish or prime importance. The variation of MRR versus input machining parameters were investigated by means of main and interaction effect plots and will also verified by ANOVA results. Using Taguchi’s design, significant machining parameters affecting the performance measures are identified as pulse peak current, pulse on time and pulse off time. The effect off each control factor on the performance measure is studied individually using the plots of signal to noise ratio. Finally the WEDM process parameters can be adjusted so as to achieve better metal removal rate and surface finish.