MACHINING OF HARD TO CUT MATERIALS USING ECDM

Abstract

The advanced materials like engineering ceramics, composites, glass etc. have some properties like wear resistance, hardness, brittleness, electrical non-conductivity etc. and because of these properties machining of these materials is not so easy. Electrochemical Discharge Machining process has been developed for micro machining of non-conductive materials. In this dissertation report, machining of glass fibre reinforce polymer using Electrochemical Discharge Machining has been done and the effects of some important process parameters on over cut, machining time and taper angle have been discussed. Applied voltage, feed rate and pulse generating time were taken as process parameters and stainless steel needle was used as tool electrode. Process parameters were optimized for minimize the over cut and machining time to conduct the experiments. The result shows that over cut and taper angle increases with increasing applied voltage, feed rate and pulse generating time. But machining time decreases with increasing of these three parameters.