Improvement of surface integrity of electro-chemical discharge machining process using powder-mixed electrolyte

Processing of Al2O3–SiCw–TiC ceramic composite by powder mixed electric discharge grinding

“…Numerous research attempts (Chow et al 2008;Chow et al 2000;Han et al 2007;Kansal et al 2005aKansal et al , 2005bKansal et al , 2006Kansal et al , 2007aKansal et al , 2007bPeças and Henriques 2003;Wong et al 1998;Wu et al 2005;Yeo et al 2007) have been reported in the field of powder mixed electric discharge machining (PMEDM). In electric discharge machining (EDM), to achieve better surface finish negative polarity (tool + ve, work -ve) was found as one of the prominent factors (Wu et al 2005).…”

“…The negative polarity gave better results in PMEDM (Wong et al 1998) than positive polarity (tool -ve, work + ve). Additional requirements for achieving good surface finish in PMEDM as reported in the literature were low pulse on time (Wong et al 1998), low discharge current (Chow et al 2000;Han et al 2007), uniform dispersion of discharges (Chow et al 2008;Chow et al 2000;Wong et al 1998), reduction in breakdown voltage (Han et al 2007) and low discharge energy (Han et al 2007;Wu et al 2005;Yeo et al 2007).…”

“…The presence of conductive phase powder particles in the dielectric medium increased the spark gap (Chow et al 2008;H. M. Chow et al 2000;Kansal et al 2007b) and helped in achieving stable machining (Han et al 2007;Kansal et al 2007b;Wong et al 1998;Wu et al 2005). The powder mixed in the dielectric supported reduction in insulating strength, being conductive in nature (Kansal et al 2007b) which increased viscosity of dielectric fluid (Yeo et al 2007).…”

“…The researchers used different type of electrically conductive phase powders in their studies such as Al (0.1 g/L) (Chow et al 2000;Wu et al 2005), SiC (Chow et al 2008;Chow et al 2000;Satyarthi and Pandey 2012), silicon (Kansal et al 2005a(Kansal et al , 2005b(Kansal et al , 2006(Kansal et al , 2007aPeças and Henriques 2003), graphite (Han et al 2007;Kansal et al 2005aKansal et al , 2005bSatyarthi and Pandey 2012), copper and tungsten Page 2 of 13 (Bhattacharya et al 2011). Wu et al (2005) also used surfactant for separation of Al (0.25 g/L) for high concentration of powder in dielectric.…”

“…Wu et al (2005) also used surfactant for separation of Al (0.25 g/L) for high concentration of powder in dielectric. Various dielectric mediums used were kerosene (Bhattacharya et al 2011;Chow et al 2000;Han et al 2007;Kansal et al 2005aKansal et al , 2005bKansal et al , 2006Kansal et al , 2007aKansal et al , 2007bPeças and Henriques 2003;Wong et al 1998;Wu et al 2005;Yeo et al 2007), spark erosion oil (Bhattacharya et al 2011) and water (Chow et al 2008). The use of water as dielectric was mainly focused due to emphasis of manufacturers for initiation of green manufacturing technology.…”