Development of process technology in wire-cut operation for improving machining quality

Many of the quality problems have their origin either in the product design or process design. The statistical design of experiments is a scientific method for optimization of design parameters. This paper highlights an application of improving process design in the metal cutting operation by the wire-cut EDM (electro discharge machining) process on a hi-tech Japax Machine. An experiment was conducted on nine process parameters as per the L16 (215) orthogonal array layout. The responses considered were precision in machined dimensions and surface roughness. The data were then analyzed for mean and signal-to-noise ratio. All the nine factors turned out to be significant in at least one of the analyses and the best operating conditions were found considering the results of different analyses. Implementation of the results showed that the dimensional variability ( 3 sigma ) is reduced from 0.015 to 0.007 and the surface roughness from 4 mu m to 2 mu m. Other benefits were increased tool life by over 10% and ...