Optimization of Machining Parameters in Electric Discharge Machine using Response Surface Methodology

Abstract

The linking of fulfillment of the customer demands with the manufacturer production capability plays extremely important role in producing large quantity of products with superior quality, within lead time and utmost preciseness. To cope up with the market competition and customer satisfaction the traditional manufacturing process has been replaced by the non-conventional advanced techniques. Electric Discharge machine is such type of advanced technique belonging to the nontraditional methods of manufacturing where the material is removed from the machined part by the continuous repetitive sparks causing the metal to melt and vaporize leaving behind tiny craters. In this EDM machine, drilling operation was performed where the cutting parameters selection played a vital role in minimizing the surface roughness (SR) and maximizes the material removal rate (MRR) to increase the quality of the product. So, in this work optimization of the output is done by machining the materials like Stainless steel(SS-304), Aluminum(AL-6351) are machined by copper and the output performance characters like Surface Roughness (SR), Material removal rate (MRR) are optimized by taking three levels of pulse current (Ip), Pulse duration (Ton) and Pulse interval (Toff) as input machining parameters. Experiments were conducted by taking L9 orthogonal array of Taguchi model of design of experiment. Response surface methodology was used to obtain 3D surface plots to study the output response with respect to two inputs simultaneously. These obtained results provide useful information to control the process responses and ensure higher productivity, accuracy and enhanced surface quality.