Modeling and Influence of Voltage and Duty Ratio on Wire Feed in WECM: Possible Alternative of WEDM. Issue 2 (12th January 2018) - Debnath, S.
Abstract : Newly developed wire electrochemical machining (WECM) operates in the same principle of electrochemical machining (ECM) and has recently been very popular for fabrication of different microfeatures effectively. However, the capability and possibility of this newer process is still out of limelight and require specific and extensive research to explore. Hence, the present research work deals with indigenous development of suitable WECM setup for fabricating microslits with feed values as high as that employed during wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) process, thereby making WECM a cost effective technique for batch scale production. The influence of applied voltage and duty ratio on maximum feed has been investigated and mathematical modeling for finding out a correlation between maximum feed with values of voltage and duty ratio has been developed and validated. Moreover, maximum feed achieved with different parameter settings has been tabulated. It has been found that maximum feed that can be achieved during controlled machining with 18 V, 18% duty ratio, 50 kHz frequency and 0.1 M H2 SO4 is 0.84375 mm/min which can still be compared with feed rates commonly employed during WEDM, given the fact that tungsten wire of diameter as low as 50 μm has been used in the present study.