THE EFFECTS OF TAGUCHI METHOD AND ANOVA IN OPTIMIZING PARAMETERS FOR ENHANCING POWER OPTIMIZATION FOR ELECTRICAL DISCHARGE

Energy consumption in machining process is still a challenge in industries nowadays. A lot of new technologies have been invented to ease the machining and manufacturing process in industry. However, energy optimization in Electrical Discharge Machining (EDM) wirecut is still not fully figured out by manufacturers. The purpose of this experiment was to find the suitable parameter that was consumed for power optimization in EDM wirecut to cut the energy usage in machining process as it would affect the environment. Pulse on (Ton), pulse off (Toff) and cutting voltage (V) with 3 different levels were the variable parameters for this experiment which ranged between (1-16) μs, (6-300) μs and (2-255) V respectively. The outcome result that considered was the total power consumption, and material removal rate (MRR). In this experiment, material known as Stavax ESR (AISI420) was used as the workpiece to achieve the result of power optimization in EDM wirecut. In addition, the Design of Experiment was defined by using Taguchi method. This method was used to reduce the number of experiments, save energy, time and maximize the MRR value. The data analysis and optimization method used for this study was signal-to-noise ratio (S/N ratio) and ANOVA analysis. The most significant variable that was found is the Pulse-ON. The best machining parameters that are generated to produce the best results with minimum value of total power consumption and maximum value of MRR are Pulse ON= 5 μs, Pulse OFF= 52 μs and Voltage =3V.