Model Prediction and Experimental Study of Material Removal Rate in Micro ECDM Process on Borosilicate Glass

Abstract

Miniaturization of products has become a major technological challenge in production industries. Material removal in microscopic and sub-microscopic level has become a demand for producing such products. Electro-Chemical Discharge Machining (ECDM) is one of the hybrid non-conventional machining processes to machine materials that are electrically conductive and non-conductive at a micro-level utilizing the principles of Electro Discharge Machining (EDM) and Electro-Chemical Machining (ECM). The most common nonconductive materials machined with this process are various types of glasses, ceramics, composites, etc. In the current paper, a Finite Element Model (FEM) of the ECDM process is carried out in the discharge regime (less than 300 μm) with pulsed DC in a 2D domain to characterize the Material Removal Rate (MRR) as a process output response in borosilcate glass machining. From the model and experiements the value of MRR is found to be 0.373 mg/ min and 0.414 mg/min. It can be considered that there is almost negligible difference in MRR between experimental and model values with 9.9% error variation. Hence the results are validated with experimentation, and there is a good agreement observed between the results.