International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing

Korean Society for Precision Engineering (한국정밀공학회)
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Effects of Nanopowder Additives in Micro-electrical Discharge Machining

  • Tan, Peng-Cheong (School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University) ;
  • Yeo, Swee-Hock (School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University) ;
  • Tan, Yie-Voon (School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University)
  • Published : 2008.07.01
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Abstract

The use of electrical discharge machining (EDM) for micro-machining applications requires particular attention to the machined surface roughness and discharge gap distance, as these factors affect the geometrical accuracy of micro-parts. Previous studies of conventional EDM have shown that selected types of semi-conductive and non-conductive powder suspended in the dielectric reduced the surface roughness while ensuring a limited increase in the gap distance. Based on this, an extension of the technique to micro-EDM was studied Such work is necessary since the introduction of nanopowders suspended in the dielectric is not well understood. The experimental results showed that a statistically significant reduction in the surface roughness value was achieved at particular concentrations of the powder additives, depending on the powder material and the machining input energy setting. The average reduction in surface roughness using a powder suspended dielectric was between 14-24% of the average surface roughness generated using a pure dielectric. Furthermore, when these additive concentrations were used for machining, no adverse increase in the gap distance was observed.

Keywords

References

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