Analysis and reduction of process energy consumption and thermal deformation in a micro-structure wire electrode electric discharge machining thin-wall component

In order to reduce process energy consumption and geometric error induced by thermal deformation simultaneously in sustainable wire electrode discharge machining(WEDM) process, this work applies a new micro crack wire electrode to enhance machine characteristic, and describes the reduction mechanism of above two critical factors compared with brass wire when machining thin-wall components. Firstly, a number of experiments are conducted to explore the effects trend of machining parameters on thermal deformation and material removal rate(MRR) by above two wire tools. The results indicate that micro crack wire can achieve a significant decrease by an average of 32.60% in MRR and 42.69% in thermal deformation compared with brass wire. And the best parameters combination for micro crack wire is pulse on time:13 mu s, pulse off time:8 mu s, wire speed:0.09 m/s, water pressure:1.1 MPa. The analysis of residual stress and discharge points distribution explains the improvement mechanism of micro crack wire by decreasing the magnitude of residual stress (33.14% on average) and non-uniformity of discharge points distribution (36.32% on average). Besides, the results of energy consumption and environmental effect demonstrate that micro crack wire can obviously reduce energy consumption by an average of 22.68% and debris pollution. Eventually, the analysis of surface topography, debris shape, micro structures, recast layer thickness and surface element composition are also performed. It can be concluded that the micro crack wire shows prominent superiority and potential for applications in the sustainable manufacturing field. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.