Experimental Investigation on Electro-Discharge Deposition Process

Abstract

The demand for multifunctional micro parts is an ever increasing need for product miniaturization. Amongst the spectrum of micro manufacturing processes, Electro-Discharge Deposition (EDD) is a newly developing additive process to produce parts in micro scale. In EDD the tool and workpiece electrodes are connected to reverse polarity in order to remove material from anode which deposits on cathode surface. The advantage of EDD is, any conducting tool material can be deposited irrespective of its hardness on the specified conducting substrate. So far, limited work has been carried out to develop micro parts like micro cylinders, micro spiral structures, etc., by EDD. In this work an attempt has been made to study the effect of various process parameters like current, duty cycle, pulse on time, voltage and table feed rate in EDD using central composite rotatable design (CCRD). It is found from the experimental results that, current plays a significant role in deposition of tool material.

Effect of magnetic field intensity on deposition of copper tool in electro discharge deposition

“…Some researchers [3] reported the possibilities of material migration between electrodes, which is applied to enhance the workpiece. The process of migration of material has been used by researchers [4,5] to manufacture 3D micro parts, where a metal layer of copper was fabricated over a steel workpiece by deposition. The demand for micro products and their comp onents are growing significantly, owing to wide applications in numerous fields such as electronics, microelectromechan ical systems, medical, automobile and biotechnology, etc [7].…”