Experimental Investigation on Surface Roughness in Electrical Discharge Turning of Ti-6Al-4V Alloy

Abstract

This study presents a novel EDM turning process specially designed and developed to generate precise cylindrical forms on hard and difficult-to-machine materials.For this purpose, a specially designed turning spindle is used.The spindle was mounted on a conventional die-sinking EDM machine to rotate the workpiece.Axially symmetric parts can be manufactured by feeding the shaped tool into the rotating workpiece.In this way an axisymmetric workpiece can be made with small tools at both macro and micro levels.Effects of machining parameters, such as the current, pulse-on time, rotational speed, flushing pressure, and duty factor, on the surface roughness of Ti-6Al-4V alloy in electrical discharge turning were investigated.Taguchi's design of experiment technique was used.Analysis of variance and regression analysis were performed on experimental data.The signal-to-noise ratio analysis was employed to find the optimal condition.