Investigations on Wire Electrical Discharge Machining of Nickel-Based Superalloy Using Taguchi’s Approach

Abstract

Incoloy 800HT is one of the hard-to-machine materials and extensively employed in high-temperature applications. It possess better strength and lower thermal diffusion that results in poor machinability by conventional machining methods. To overcome such kind of demerits, unconventional methods of material removal process have been evolved and assumed to be an appropriate alternative method for conventional methods of machining. Wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) is one amongst the variant evolved from the perception of electrical discharge machining that is predominantly adopted for machining of hard materials and also for making complicated shaped components. In this exploration, an experimental study has been done on WEDM of nickel-based superalloy and mainly focusing on optimizing the process variables for machining of Incoloy 800HT by using Taguchi’s response analysis. The experimental runs are planned by Taguchi’s method. The experimentation has been done by considering the independent process variables such as pulse on time, pulse off time and peak current at three different levels. Material removal rate (MRR) and surface roughness (SR) are the preferred as performance characteristics in this analysis. From this experimental analysis, the impact of each individual process parameters on the desired response parameters has been studied.