Electro-discharge machining (EDM) process is one of the most successful non-conventional machining processes for the last three to four decades in machining very hard materials which are tough to machine by conventional machining process. In the EDM process, besides the erosion of workpiece material, the inherent nature of the process leads to some tool material removal also. This nature of EDM process has been exploited by the researchers which led to the invention of Electro-discharge coating (EDC). EDC is a surface modification technique where tool material gets deposited on the substrate surface due to the sparking effect. It works on reverse polarity to that of EDM. A literature review based on the phenomenon of surface improvement by EDC process and also the future drifts of its application are shown in this paper.

This paper introduces the surface modi¯cation of Al-6351 alloy by green compact SiC-Cu electrode using electro-discharge coating (EDC) process. A Taguchi L-16 orthogonal array is employed to investigate the process by varying tool parameters like composition and compaction load and electro-discharge machining (EDM) parameters like pulse-on time and peak current. Material deposition rate (MDR), tool wear rate (TWR) and surface roughness (SR) are measured on the coated specimens. An optimum condition is achieved by formulating overall evaluation criteria (OEC), which combines multi-objective task into a single index. The signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio, and the analysis of variance (ANOVA) is employed to investigate the e®ect of relevant process parameters. A con¯rmation test is conducted based on optimal process parameters and experimental results are provided to illustrate the e®ectiveness of this approach. The modi¯ed surface is characterized by optical microscope and X-ray di®raction (XRD) analysis. XRD analysis of the deposited layer con¯rmed the transfer of tool materials to the work surface and formation of inter-metallic phases. The micro-hardness of the resulting composite layer is also measured which is 1.5-3 times more than work material's one and highest layer thickness (LT) of 83.644 m has been successfully achieved.

This paper investigates the application of Taguchi method with fuzzy logic for multi objective optimization of roughness parameters in electro discharge coating process of Al-6351 alloy with powder metallurgical compacted SiC/Cu tool. A Taguchi L16 orthogonal array was employed to investigate the roughness parameters by varying tool parameters like composition and compaction load and electro discharge machining parameters like pulse-on time and peak current. Crucial roughness parameters like Centre line average roughness, Average maximum height of the profile and Mean spacing of local peaks of the profile were measured on the coated specimen. The signal to noise ratios were fuzzified to optimize the roughness parameters through a single comprehensive output measure (COM). Best COM obtained with lower values of compaction load, pulse-on time and current and 30:70 (SiC:Cu) composition of tool. Analysis of variance is carried out and a significant COM model is observed with peak current yielding highest contribution followed by pulse-on time, compaction load and composition. The deposited layer is characterised by X-Ray Diffraction analysis which confirmed the presence of tool materials on the work piece surface.

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