A Study On The Quality Of Micro Hole Machining Of Tungsten Carbide

Chua , Ka Hui (2010) A Study On The Quality Of Micro Hole Machining Of Tungsten Carbide. Project Report. UTeM, Melaka, Malaysia. (Submitted)

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Abstract

This paper describes the study of the quality of micro-hole electrical discharge machining (EDM) of tungsten carbide by using copper electrode. The EDM process is a thermal machining process, which the conductive workpiece is melted through repetitive sparks generate through ignition and cut off of voltage and current. The micro-EDM is gaining popular in recent years due to its advantages in machining micro-hole of hard and brittle material such as ceramic due to its non contact machining process. Through this study, the parameters such as peak current, pulse duration, electrode polarity and flushing were investigated. The setup of the experiment was based on the design of experiment (DOE) method. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to generate the experiment matrix in this study in order to minimize the runs of experiment. The totals of 26 runs were done by manipulating the parameters (peak current, pulse duration and flushing). Then, the quality of the micro-hole machined by using micro-EDM was investigated based on the surface roughness (SR) of the micro hole and the thickness of heat affected zone (HAZ). Based upon the experimental results, that surface roughness of machined surface and HAZ thickness were influenced by pulsed current, pulse duration and flushing. Lower peak current, pulse duration with flushing produces finer surface finish. The optimum parameter in order to obtain finest surface is 4.5A peak current, 5μs pulse duration with flushing, which result to 1.264μm surface roughness. Besides that, higher peak current, pulse duration without flushing produced higher HAZ thickness.

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