STUDIES ON MACHINING OF COMPOSITE MATERIAL USING ECDM PROCESS

Abstract

Composite materials provide high strength-to-weight ratio, good damage tolerance, excellent fatigue resistance, high modulus-to-weight ratio, and corrosion resistance which make these materials only choice for the aerospace, construction, transportation industries as well as in military and medical applications. Composite materials depending upon the matrix materials are of three types. These are metal matrix composite, ceramic matrix composites and polymer matrix composites. Traditional machining processes like turning, drilling or milling and non-conventional process such as electric discharge machining , laser beam machining , electron beam machining , abrasive water jet machining, electro-chemical machining etc. has been applied but all these process has their own disadvantages. To overcome these disadvantages and to combine the advantages of two processes, a hybrid process electrochemical discharge machining is adopted which have unique features of machining conductive as well as nonconductive materials. In this report, basic process mechanism, need of the process and the major research work done by various researchers has been reviewed and conclusions has been made. Experiments have been carried out in CNC controlled ECDM setup and material removal rate, hole overcut and hole depth have been measured with variation of process parameters. Effects of variation of various process parameters on material removal rate and hole overcut has been shown and analysis of the observation has also been done.