An experimental study for multi-pass cutting operation in wire electrical discharge machining of WC-5.3% Co composite

This work presents the investigation on multi-pass cutting operation (single rough cut followed by multi trim cuts) in wire electrical discharge machining (WEDM) of WC-5.3 % Co composite. Trim cuts were performed using Taguchi’s design of experiment method to investigate the influence of rough cut history (RHis), discharge current (Ip), pulse-on time (Ton), wire offset (WO) and number of trim cuts (Ntrim) on two performance characteristics namely depth of material removed (DMR) and surface roughness (SR). Result shows that the surface finish improves significantly in trim cutting operation irrespective of the rough cutting operation, while depth of material removed is proportional to the number of trim cuts followed. Using analysis of variance (ANOVA) on experimental data, it is found that Ton, WO and Ntrim are most significant parameters affecting the DMR, while Ip, Ton and WO are most significant for SR in trim cutting operation. Impact of RHis was negligible on final surface roughness, but it can influence the dimensional tolerance of the machined component. Using Taguchi method, WEDM parameters were optimized for DMR and SR, individually. Using nominal value of DMR from trim cutting operation, wire offset value has been predicted for rough cutting operation which helps to achieve the final dimensional precision. Using the same strategy, problem of selection of accurate wire offset and discharge parameters for rough and trims cutting operations can be solved easily for WEDM of new and exotic materials.

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