Investigations on drilling of micro holes using electrical discharge machining

Abstract

There is a growing demand for industrial products that are capable of multi function as well as smaller foot print Smaller foot print results in lower material cost as well lower energy consumption Several manufacturing processes have been developed for producing miniature products and features Producing micro hole is one of the major requirements in most products such as fuel injector nozzles fluidic filters biomedical filters and ink jet printer nozzles newlineHowever conventional machining process is not capable unless micro tools are used and this is possible only with micro machine tools The same applies for non conventional machining processes such as EDM ECM USM and others Although EDM and ECM are designed for the macro domain they can be used for producing micro features by modifying the process parameters used In the micro domain Micro EDM has been selected for micro hole machining for its advantages such as machining of hard materials concave shapes and intricate 3D structures Based on the advantages the experiments are planned to study the performance of micro EDM machine The process parameters such as gap voltage capacitance have been varied to study the output responses namely Material Removal Rate Tool Wear Rate Overcut and Taper angle Experiments are planned with the Stainless Steel of grade 304 workpiece of 200and#956;m thickness and tool electrode of diameter 500 and#956;m newline newline