Experimental Study of Surface Parameters of EN31 on Powder Mixed EDM using Taguchi Methodology

PEDM has become an effective method of machining extremely tough and brittle electrically conductive materials. It is widely used in the process of making moulds and dies and sections of complex geometry and intricate shapes. The work piece material selected in this experiment is EN 31 taking into account its wide usage in industrial applications. In today’s world 304 stainless steel contributes to almost half of the world’s production and consumption for industrial purposes. The input variable parameters are type of powder, current, pulse on time and powder concentration. Taguchi method is applied to create an L18 orthogonal array of input variables using the Design of Experiments (DOE). The effect of the variable parameters mentioned above upon machining characteristics such as Material Removal Rate (MRR) and Surface Roughness (SR) is studied and investigated. The tool material is copper. All the calculations are made with the help of MINITAB 16 software. Dielectric used for experimentation is kerosene. Two powders silicon carbide and boron carbide of 70 mesh is used. Most influence factor for MRR observed is powder concentration with 49.12 % contribution. For SR peak current with contribution of 43.4 % plays a n important role.