Electrical Discharge Machining of Hard Tool Steel with Copper Alloy Electrodes

Abstract

Some hard materials such as H-13 tool steel which is usually known as difficult to machine with the help of conventional machining process. This kind of material is machined by non conventional method such as electrical discharge machining (EDM). The material H-13 steel tool is machined by using cupper (Cu), Cupper Brass (CuZ) and Cupper Chromium (CuCr) electrode with Kerosene dielectric fluid. We found the performance such as Material removal rate (MRR), Tool wear rate (TWR) and Surface finish (SF). The effects of different parameters were investigated on various machining responses such as Material Removal Rate (MRR), Tool Wear Rate (TWR) and Surface Roughness (SR). The experiments were designed by using L₃₆ orthogonal array of Taguchi methodology and results were statistically analyzed using analysis of variance. The result shows that the polarity is an important factor that affects all the response parameter. Suitable parametric condition were research to optimize MRR, TWR and SR