Modelling of micro wire electro discharge machining in aerospace material

Abstract

During the last decade there has been continuing demand of compact, integrated and small size products by a non-traditional process for accurate and cost-effective measurement of material properties. These are needed for machining for tools and product design, the development of
micro size components, the growing needs for micro-feature generation. Micro-manufacturing processes have different material capabilities and machining performance specifications. Machining performance specifications of concern include minimum feature size, tolerance, surface finish, and material removal rate (MRR) and applications of advanced, which is very difficult-to machine materials. They have made the wire EDM an important manufacturing
process to meet these demands. Wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) technology has been widely used in production, aerospace/aircraft, medical and virtually all areas of conductive material machining. Aerospace materials are known as unique materials ever produced in
manufacturing industries. It’s capable to withstand in very high temperature and the excellent resistance in mechanical and chemical debilitate. The aerospace material is nickel based superalloys is having high strength, thermal conflict with very tough material characteristics. It is
also very good in corrosion resistance in many conditions of engineering applications. Due to very tough in nature and the machinability has been studied by many researchers on these materials and been carried out for last few years. This project presents the machining of the aerospace materials using wire EDM with in micro size. The objective of this project is to investigate the performance of micro wire EDM machining on aerospace materials. WEDM is
extensively used in machining of conductive materials when accuracy and tight tolerance is important. Zigzag cutting operation in wire EDM is treated as challenging one because
improvement of more than one performance is measured. Simple and easily understandable model for an axisymmetric 2D model for wire electric discharge machining (WEDM) has been developed using the finite element method (FEM). The observation have been influenced on various characteristics namely, material removal rate (MRR) and residual stress. A full factorial design of experiment (DOE) approach with two-level, three factorials is employed to conduct this experiment. Mini tab software was used to perform the ANOVA analysis and confirmation test was also conducted to verify and compare the results from the theoretical prediction using software.