Studying the microhardness on the surface of SKD61 in PMEDM using tungsten carbide powder

Abstract

Electrical discharge machining (EDM) process is widely used to process hard materials in the industry. The process of electrical discharge is changed and called PMEDM when alloy powder is added in the oil dielectric. In this study, the effect of tungsten carbide alloy powder added in the dielectric on the microhardness of surface (HV) status of the workpiece SKD61 after machining is investigated. Studies show that the microhardness of surface obtained by PMEDM is generally better than that by normal EDM. The experiment shows that at the selected process window, adding the powder has resulted in an improvement of the microhardness up to 129.17%.