Study on Combined process of Micro-EDM and Electrorheological Fluid-assisted Polishing

A novel machining method which is a combination of electrical discharge machining (EDM) and electrorheological fluid-assisted polishing (ERP) is presented to finish hard materials. The ER fluid is used as work fluid, which resulting in the material removal and polishing simultaneously. In this study, a series of machining experiments on aluminum alloy material are carried out to obtain the microstructures of machined surface using the different mode of material removal. Moreover, the ERP process can finish the micro-craters on workpiece surface after EDM to obtain better profile of removal region.