Abstract
Reaction-bonded silicon carbide (RB-SiC) is widely used as moulding dies material in many industries thanks to its excellent properties. Nevertheless, because of its high hardness and brittleness, it is extremely hard to be machined with high accuracy and good surface finish. Therefore, electrical discharge machining (EDM) has been chosen as an alternative method to machine the RB-SiC. In the present study, an experimental investigation has been conducted to optimize and validate the EDM parameters on the MRR and EWR of low conductivity RB-SiC in EDM. The new Cu – 1.0 wt. % CNF composite electrode that fabricated via powder metallurgy (PM) process was used as the electrode. The experiments were systematically conducted by face-cubic centre (FCC) approach of response surface methodology (RSM). The mathematical models for MRR and EWR were developed in this study. In addition, analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also figured out to check the significance of the models. Three experiments were conducted as the confirmation test to determine the error percentage of MRR and EWR. Based on the results, only 3.06% and 3.93% errors were determined for both MRR and EWR, respectively. The optimum conditions for multi responses (MRR and EWR) were found to be at a current of 6A, voltage of 22V, and pulse on-time of 12µs. The findings of this study provide an important reference to the manufacturing industries, especially mould and die industry.
Highlights
It was noticed that different electrical discharge machining (EDM) process parameters impact the machining outputs such as material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness, and electrode wear ratio (EWR)
Three factors and two levels face-cubic centre (FCC) design was used to determine the optimal factors of Material Removal Rate (MRR) and Electrode Wear Ratio (EWR)
The values gave a close result to each other among the overall experiment mean and predicted values. It validated the combination of the obtained optimum EDM parameters of Reaction-bonded silicon carbide (RB-SiC) because the percentage errors of MRR and EWR were less than 5%, which is less than significant level
Summary
The most challenging part in the engineering fields are the fastest revolution changes in materials technologies simultaneously with the numberless changes of quality, performances and economic needs [1-2]. Reaction-bonded silicon carbide is amazingly hard and brittle ceramic material This material is the right choice to substitute the silicon for advanced precision machining applications due to its predominant characteristics such as chemical inertness, high wear resistance and thermal conductivity [3]-[5]. It was noticed that different EDM process parameters impact the machining outputs such as material removal rate (MRR), surface roughness, and electrode wear ratio (EWR). The outcomes revealed that MRR is more affected by the present of current density and voltage factors This may happen due to the higher concentration of discharge energy produced when the intensity increased which lead to the higher MRR. The current work plans to investigate the effect of process parameters on the EDM machining performances of RB-SiC by using Cu – 1.0 wt. The design of experiment (DOE) using response surface methodology (RSM) was used to investigate the impact of EDM parameters on the machining characteristics
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
