Experimental Investigation on Material Removal Rate and Tool Wear Rate for Machining Metal Matrix Composites in EDM Process

Electrical discharge machining (EDM) is one of non-traditional cutting method or manufacturing process for processing brittle and solid materials like composite materials and other difficult to machine materials. It is most usually utilized to manufacture metal matrix composites (MMCs) and is very solid materials. Aluminum based MMCs are to a large degree utilized in defense and aviation parts for their advanced and new characteristics like strength to weight ratio, high rigidity etc. The aluminum alloy 6061 and 7.5% SiC has been used as a workpiece and copper as a tool electrode, discharge current (Ip), pulse on-time (Ton), and pulse off-time (Toff) were selected as machining dependent variables for this study. The dependent variables were tool wear rate (TWR) and material removal rate (MRR). The experiments are planned using Box-Behnken design. Empirical models are developed for MRR and TWR using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression models. The getted results showed that the MRR is increasing with increasing in Ip and Ton while TWR is decreasing when Ip and Ton is increase.