Experimental Investigation on the Electrode Specific Performance in Micro-EDM of Die-Steel

Recent advancement in manufacturing industries has given rise to miniaturized and light weight products with increasing high engineering applications. The miniaturized products demand innovative manufacturing methods. Microelectric discharge machining (micro-EDM) is one of the most powerful technologies capable of fabricating microstructures/parts. Experiments have been conducted on the machining of EN24 die steel with different electrodes such as tungsten, copper, copper tungsten, and silver tungsten in micro-EDM setup. The process performance was estimated based on material removal rate (MRR), circularity, overcut, and heat-affected zones (HAZ) of micromachined holes. Further, the outcome of various machining parameters such as gap voltage, capacitance, threshold, and feed rate of the electrode has also been investigated. The results revealed that the Cu as electrode achieved maximum MRR followed by AgW, CuW, and W, respectively.